The Aryavarta Chronicles Kaurava: Book 2

by Krishna Udayasankar

  ‘What…has the sun set?’

  ‘It will shortly.’

  ‘Then I’d better have a bath, and quick.’

  Guhyaka stepped up to help Shikandin unbraid his long, matted hair.

  ‘I’ll go see to the hot water,’ the young man said as he left the hut.

  Shikandin said, ‘It’s time we find him a wife, since he can’t seem to manage that task on his own.’

  ‘Which is hardly a shock, considering he is your son… He doesn’t realize that most of the young girls in the ten tribes around us have their hearts set on him and that he’s been consistent in breaking them all.’

  ‘Can you ever forgive me, Guhyaka?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For breaking your heart, my love. I should never have left you.’

  ‘You didn’t have a choice, Shikandin. Besides, it was a long time ago. I know why you left. I know why you came back. I have no complaints against either decision. You did what you had to. I understand that. He understands that.’

  It had been a bittersweet moment for Shikandin to come back to Guhyaka after many years to find that she had a child. He had not asked her, even once, whether Uttamaujas was his or not. He simply had not cared. Guhyaka was his. In his heart, he knew she had always been his, and he hers, though neither a rite nor a word had bound them together. In the same vein, as far as he was concerned, he was the boy’s father. As Uttamaujas had grown into youth, his resemblance to Shikandin had become more apparent. Now, the young man – barely a couple of years younger than Yudhamanyu – stood as tall as his father and shared his green-brown eyes. Uttamaujas wore his hair shorter and it tended to curl a little, like Guhyaka’s. If ever he grew it enough to wear it in braids, as Shikandin did, age would be the only factor telling the two men apart at first glance. By contrast, Kshatradharman, who was barely nine, took after his mother, though the entire village proudly declared that he had his father’s brave heart, as did his brother.

  Guhyaka said, ‘He wants to go with you, you know… On your…expeditions.’

  Shikandin shook his head. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘You trained him, Shikandin. Uttamaujas is a good fighter.’

  ‘He is. But I can’t risk it, Guhyaka. If anything were to happen to him or Kshatradharman…or to you…’

  ‘It would break your heart…as it would break mine if anything were to happen to you,’ Guhyaka pointed out. ‘Yet, this is what we must do, Shikandin. You know that. Come now, it will be moonrise soon.’

  Shikandin sighed and made his way out of the hut and to the bathing area behind it. He did not fail to notice that Uttamaujas had already cleaned his cast-off armour and polished it till the metal shone.

  Moonrise brought the forest alive in a medley of light, shadow, sound and smell. Shikandin walked barefoot on the mossy ground, Guhyaka on one side of him, Uttamaujas and Kshatradharman on the other. Around them, other villagers walked in silence or in hushed conversation with their own families, cherishing the companionship of loved ones. Shikandin felt one amongst them in many ways. In fact, he had traded his usual robes for the knee-length sheath that the men of the tribe wore on such occasions, and he had allowed Guhyaka to wrap many strings of beads around his wrists, each one with a prayer for his life and well-being. He turned to her to find that she was looking at him with unrestrained affection. On impulse, she reached up to run her fingers along the wrinkles around his eyes and trace the line of his strong, firm jaw.

  Shikandin bit lightly at her finger and she pulled it back with an embarrassed look at Uttamaujas, who pretended he hadn’t noticed.

  The moment filled Shikandin with peace and guilt. A part of him was glad to be here, away from the larger world, from the wounded realm that was Aryavarta, and his own, scarred life as a prince. Yet, he felt guilty that he could find peace and happiness when Panchali was suffering as she was, that he could think of beginning a new life when so many old bonds and duties remained to be fulfilled. But how could he turn away from Guhyaka, who had accepted him as he was, without question; from Uttamaujas, who had treated him with the love and respect that Yudhamanyu had never shown; and from Kshtradharman, who had given him a glimpse of the innocence and childhood he’d never known.

  Shikandin pushed all such thoughts out of his mind as ahead of them a small stone shrine gleamed in the moonlight. His hand went, in an instinctive move, to the Wright-metal beads around his neck. He felt that every man, woman and child in the village was looking at him, but he knew it was just imagination. With an effort, he brought his hand down, forcing it to fall at his side.

  One by one the villagers went down on their knees before the stone shrine, their eyes closed and heads bowed to the ground in prayer. All except Shikandin. He knelt down with the others, but his eyes remained on the single pillar. Its surface still bore the dark scars of fire. Uttamaujas had been right, Shikandin had not wanted to miss this gathering. It was the only time he could stand in front of the shrine without wanting to break into tears, without hearing the screams of pain from the past. It was the only time he dared look upon the spirit within the stone and ask for forgiveness for all that had happened and all that he had failed to do.

  It began to rain. One by one, the villagers made their way back to the settlement, those most content with their lives the first ones to leave and seek the dry sanctuary of their hutments. Shikandin and his family were the last to leave, but it was not for lack of happiness. They walked back in silence, uncaring of the rain. Shikandin hoisted a sleepy Kshatradharman on to his shoulders and wrapped an arm each around Guhyaka and Uttamaujas, who gave him an indulgent smile, as though he knew he were old enough to protest against the excessively paternal gesture but cared for his father enough to allow the transgression.

  That night, Shikandin slept with the contentment of a man who had everything to lose and knew it. His last waking thought was of his sister.

  6

  ‘AAH! I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS,’ PARTHA SAID, SPITTING vehemently on the mossy forest floor.

  Bhim snorted, partly amused and partly in derision, and continued to skin the dead deer with relative ease. ‘The greatest archer in all Aryavarta, they call you, and you can’t skin your kill without getting blood and bile in your mouth. Stop pulling at the hide, muhira, you need to let it slide off!’

  ‘I’m an archer, not a butcher, Bhim. I don’t care how long I do this, I’ll never get used to it.’

  The statement brought on an unintended silence as both brothers thought of a conversation that had begun on many occasions, but had not yet been concluded. They worked together in silence until where there had been a deer there was now meat, ready to be cooked. They took a bath in the pond nearby before sitting down under the shade of a tree, far enough from the smell of raw flesh.

  Partha spoke first, ‘He must have a plan.’

  ‘What makes you say so?’

  ‘Govinda Shauri always has a plan!’

  ‘Doesn’t the fact that he has made no move tell you that he has no plan...that he has failed? It’s over, Partha!’

  Partha smiled. ‘What is faith, Bhim?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘It is believing in a man who has lost faith in himself. I know that even if I were to ever lose my will, my courage, Govinda would never lose faith in me – his faith in anyone, in humanity. That faith has kept him going, and it keeps him alive still. But he has lost faith in himself and so he can do nothing. He doesn’t trust himself, so he refuses to act. There is no plan. This is what it is, what it has been for years now. He is our ruler.’

  ‘Syoddhan?’

  ‘Why not? You have to admit he is doing an admirable task of running the empire, even though he has not taken on the title of Emperor. He can’t even impose edicts, but he still gets the other vassals to do what is needed by sheer force of reason and diplomacy. Of course, the price he pays for that is allowing the militarization of all of Aryavarta, but frankly I don’t see a problem in that. We are safer t
han before. We are more prosperous than before. And no one knows that better than us – common people as we now are. He’s good. He’s really very good.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why Govinda has done nothing. He knows this is best.’

  ‘Hah! For all your doubts, you too want to believe this is yet another of Govinda Shauri’s complicated plans, don’t you?’

  ‘You have your way of keeping faith in him; I have mine.’

  Partha did not argue the point. Bhim, he knew, was right. This was a matter of faith and there was no single way to keep it. Just as there was no right way. For all they knew, Govinda was gone, truly gone.

  Yet again, Bhim broke the contemplative silence. ‘Did…did you ever think of him as a brother, Partha?’

  ‘Govinda?’

  ‘Syoddhan.’

  ‘Not really. I wonder why… He’s older than the both of us and it should have been natural, I suppose, to treat him the way we’ve always treated Dharma. I don’t know why we never did. You were with him at Kashi, Bhim. You trained under Balabadra at the same time as he did. Surely you’d know him better.’

  Bhim hesitated. ‘Can I be honest? I’m not sure I’ve quite admitted this even to myself, but I found Syoddhan easy to get along with. I guess the only thing I didn’t like is that whenever there were others around, especially one of his brothers, he used to pretend that this so-called rivalry between us was a big thing. But I’ve spent enough time in relative solitude with him to know he’s not like that at all. I’m not saying I like him – his behaviour is, in my estimation, hypocrisy. I think I’ve just learned to dislike him less since…since I’ve realized that I may not have been too different. Everything I thought and felt about Syoddhan and his brothers was what I had learnt to believe, as Dharma’s brother and Pandu Kauravya’s son. Never did I question why things were that way, and whether it was right.’

  ‘I think that’s a mistake all of us have made, but…’ Partha trailed off and waved a hand in welcome as Nakul and Sadev walked out through the foliage on the far side of the pond and made their way to where Partha and Bhim were seated.

  ‘Fruit?’ Nakul asked. He tossed a red-orange mango to each of them before biting with relish into the juicy pulp of a third.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be shooting down jungle fowl,’ Partha said, frowning at the twins with all the authority of an elder brother.

  ‘Nah!’ Nakul said. ‘We found this particularly inviting mango tree. And we had to pick the herbs Bhim wanted to flavour the meat with. Don’t worry…I’m sure Panchali will shoot down enough fowl for you.’

  Bhim laughed. ‘You make me feel like we haven’t aged a day, Nakul. You still act like a teenager.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a particularly grown-up way of eating fruit, brother.’

  ‘There he goes again with that sharp tongue of his. I tell you, some things never change.’

  ‘It’s in our blood. Grand-uncle Bhisma has looked exactly the same for the last forty-odd years that I’ve seen him. Unless he’s changed in these past eleven…no, twelve, is it not…years?’

  ‘I doubt it!’ Partha said, a dash of acrimony creeping into his voice. He found it impossible to think of Bhisma without thinking of the dice game and all that had been said and done.

  ‘Twelve years… We say that like it’s nothing.’

  ‘It was nothing when we built the empire. That took us nearly twelve years too, if you remember. Days, months and years, moving forward, fighting, negotiating, planning and executing. Yet we didn’t begrudge a single day or a single muhurtta of that time. I did not see my son for those years, nor did most of you see your children. It didn’t hurt then, but it does now. I wonder why.’

  ‘Fighting and conquest are easier,’ Sadev said, speaking for the first time. ‘What we are doing now, this is the difficult part.’

  ‘Why do you say that, Sadev?’

  ‘Because we don’t know what it is we are really doing, brothers. Or do you? Tell me, is this waiting? If so, whom are we waiting for? Is this hiding? Who are we hiding from? Or is this is our way of living, and I certainly hope it isn’t because I’m beginning to think death is better than this meaningless existence. Ten years? Twelve? At times, it feels like just ten days have passed, I find myself inexplicably happy, and a part of me wishes against all reason that life could be this way forever. But there are other times when the pain and rage make me want to… Never mind!’ He passed the back of his hand over his eyes, wiping the dark thought away. ‘We want a meaning to it, Partha. If you’d died during the campaign, would you have regretted it?’

  Partha shook his head, resolute. ‘Never! I’d have been proud to die in a greater cause.’

  ‘And what cause was that?’

  ‘Why, the empire. Our brother’s empire.’ No sooner had the words left his mouth than he came to terms with what he had known all along. Partha sighed and let his head fall back to rest against the rough bark of the tree behind him. He closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind, but found it difficult to do so. Things had changed, and he hated that they had changed.

  Bhim said, ‘Maybe it’s not just an empire or a kingdom, or even our honour we’ve lost. We’ve lost faith; we’ve lost our belief in the one thing that made us who we were. We’ve lost faith in Dharma Yudhisthir. Now it seems there’s nothing left to fight for.’

  ‘It wasn’t just Dharma we fought for then,’ Partha argued. ‘We fought because we believed in the dream of a united empire, and that dream was not Dharma’s. It was Govinda’s.’

  Nakul countered, ‘And where is he now? At the end of it all it turns out that he was the least powerful and the least principled. Where has he gone? If he believed in that dream so much, why didn’t he stand up to Dharma and say, “Well you good-for-nothing Emperor, you’ve pretty much thrown away everything I gave you so why don’t you just sit in this hermitage and play with your silly notions of morality while I go ahead and be the man you should have been…” I’m sorry…’ he added, noticing his brothers’ stunned expressions. ‘I’m sorry. But really, I wish someone had said that to Dharma. I wish I had said it… It’s taken me so long to even put it into words.’ Throwing the pip he held in his hand into the lake with as much vehemence as he could muster, Nakul began striding around the clearing, trying to work off his ire. His brothers watched, pensive.

  It was Sadev who said, ‘Did you ever wonder what she fought for…and fights for still?’ He had no need to use her name. They all knew whom he spoke of.

  ‘Every single day,’ Bhim replied even as Partha nodded.

  ‘Perhaps it’s time we fought for the same reason, brothers. Perhaps it’s time we fought for ourselves, for what we know to be right.’

  ‘The drama is all very fine, Sadev,’ Nakul interjected. ‘But what can we do? And how does one decide what is right?’

  Sadev did not reply, but held up a cautionary hand, squinting his eyes at the thicket behind him. ‘Someone’s coming.’

  The four brothers ceased conversation at once and listened. The sound came again, unmistakeable – the irreverent rustle of leaves that suggested that not only was someone approaching fast, but also that he or she did not care to hide it. Sadev’s hand moved towards his sword, as did Nakul’s. Partha and Bhim continued to remain seated, but their stance grew more alert as the rustling drew nearer. When their would-be aggressor burst through the foliage, it was difficult for all four of them not to break into laughter.

  A small boy, hardly six years of age, his ochre robes and shaved head still bearing the sheen of newness, charged into the clearing at a run. The four brothers recognized him as the youngest and most recent induction into the group of acolytes at Vyasa Markand’s hermitage.

  The boy came to a stop, and doubled over, gasping, ‘Horses… men…forest…’ Then he ran off even faster than he had come, partly because he was too overawed to stay in the presence of the four warriors, but mostly because he wanted to boast to his fellow students about being just feet awa
y from their distinguished neighbours and, yes, they were every bit as imposing as they had appeared from a distance. His excitement lightened the air for a short while and Bhim chuckled out loud while his brothers smiled. But the moment passed.

  ‘The Vyasa’s guests? Or have they come to see us?’ Sadev said.

  Partha stood and reached down to give Bhim a hand. ‘Only one way to find out. Let’s head to the hermitage. The last I saw, Dharma was there, deep in discussion with the Vyasa.’

  It was Nakul who said, innocuously enough, ‘Where’s Panchali?’

  7

  PANCHALI FROZE AS SHE WAS – ON TIPTOE, FINGERS STILL RESTING gently on the fruit that hung from a branch overhead. She had been about to pluck it when the sensation hit her; the feeling that her skin was crawling, but on the inside, as though her flesh had come to life and sought to break free of her body, which was strangling it from within. Only once before had she felt this way, the discomfort acutely different from the cold instinct of being watched or hunted that her brothers had taught her to recognize and trust. This was disgust, the sense of being made of all that was repulsive and unclean. This was how she had felt at Hastina, on the day of the dice game.

  Letting go of the fruit, Panchali dropped to her haunches, the need to conceal herself taking over completely. She forced herself to breathe, inhaling deeply to calm herself, to find the part of her that had been taught to remain unafraid and strong, even in the face of death. But she could not. For it was not death that she feared. From the day she and the five brothers had been on what Dharma proudly referred to as their exile, she had been unable to sleep without nightmares, terrifying visions that ended in her waking up screaming. She never remembered them and could not understand why they continued, even though she was safe. Dharma’s brothers had taken to staying awake by turns at night, outside the hut she and the former emperor shared. Dharma himself had nothing for her but blame. All that had happened was her fault. She had refused to heed his advice. She had refused to beg for mercy. She should have, Dharma insisted, known better.