The Curse of Gandhari

by Aditi Banerjee

  ‘It would be better addressed in private.’

  Subala frowned but conceded. He liked having all of his children around for such meetings. He used them as lessons in governance. Afterwards, he would quiz them on their observations and how much they had been able to read between the lines. Gandhari felt anxious. Her heart started pounding. To not even be in the chamber when her very future would be decided! It was intolerable for someone as curious and inquisitive as she was.

  Everyone other than Subala’s wife was dismissed. Gandhari lurked behind one of the pillars near the entrance to the chamber, where the door was left ajar. Bhishma fascinated her. There was so much lore and knowledge that he carried inside him, so much exoticness from his conquests of far-off kingdoms, so much brooding concealed below his hard exterior. His accent was different, and, for the first time, she understood the sophistication her mother missed, her sense of isolation and disconnect.

  Shakuni, her brother, hid next to her. He was different from Gandhari’s other brothers. Where they were rambunctious and carefree, Shakuni was brooding and intense. He rarely said a word, just watched all that was going on around him like a hawk and filed it all away. His brothers enjoyed hunting and riding horses, but Shakuni hated to move. Speed and action distracted from the spider web of thought he wove in his concealed mind. He was short and already potbellied before he had reached twenty years of age.

  The voices from the chamber were muffled through the thick walls. She could not see them, but she could hear. Bhishma said, ‘Subala, your kingdom may be remote, but your daughter’s fair reputation has spread far and wide.’

  ‘Ahh. And what is it that is being said of her?’

  Gandhari’s heart started thumping. Since last night, she had been imagining herself as the Queen of Hastinapur.

  ‘It is said that Shiva has given her the boon that she will bear one hundred sons.’

  Subala did not respond. Gandhari knew he was displeased with the answer. That was not what he wanted his daughter to be known for.

  Her mother jumped in hastily. ‘Yes, it is true. Our daughter is so devoted. For a full year, she had worshipped Shiva, fasting every Monday. After one year, Shiva appeared to her in a dream and promised her one hundred sons.’

  Gandhari still remembered that night. Ever since she had heard about how Parvati had spent years in the forest, subsisting on nothing but air, meditating on Shiva and praying to become his wife, Gandhari had desperately wanted to do the same. As a young princess, she could not run off into the forest, but she had worshipped Shiva steadfastly. On Mondays, she woke before dawn, chanted his one thousand names, offered a stream of water from a copper vessel vibrating with the power of her chants, and repeated the mantra of his name over and over again from sunrise to sunset, without stopping to eat or drink. At sunset, she would sit on the bank of the River Panjkora, gaze into it, intent upon meditating on Shiva until she would catch a glimpse of his form in the rippled water beneath her. Sometimes it would be his trishul, his trident; sometimes the ash-smeared complexion of his body, sometimes his tawny matted locks. Only then would she eat.

  When Shiva had graced her with his presence in her dream – this beautiful ash-grey deva clothed in deerskin with matted tawny locks of hair crawling down his broad back, a trident gripped in one hand, fierce yet kind and gentle – she had felt too shy to ask him for the boon of winning a husband with his qualities who would make her as happy as Shiva made Parvati.

  Instead, he promised her the one hundred sons she had not asked for.

  She suddenly wondered now if he had done that because it was the only boon he could give her, that perhaps she was not fated to have a good husband.

  She wrung her hands inside the orange folds of her sari. Dread knotted her stomach, even as her heart pounded in hope.

  Bhishma said approvingly, ‘A girl who is so devout, so virtuous, so blessed by and dear to the devas, from such an illustrious line – well, let me come straight to the point, it would be an honour to have her marry my nephew and become part of the Kuru clan.’

  Gandhari clasped her hands so tightly that her nails dug into her skin. Shakuni watched her intently under hooded eyes. His body was held tensed and still.

  Subala said probingly, cautiously, ‘We have, of course, heard how valorous and talented Pandu is–’

  ‘Oh! Not Pandu!’ Bhishma’s voice was adamant and decisive. ‘I meant my eldest nephew, Dhritarashthra.’

  Gandhari’s mother exclaimed, ‘But he is blind!’

  Blindness along with other infirmities was considered inauspicious. He may have been the older son, but he would never inherit the throne.

  Bhishma said stiffly, ‘He may be blind, but he has been educated and trained in all the arts and sciences just like Pandu. He is an exceptionally skilled archer notwithstanding his lack of sight. He will still be the scion of the Kuru clan. I should think your daughter would be blessed to have a husband like him.’ There was the hint of smugness and condescension that a man as blunt as Bhishma could not disguise. ‘She could not hope to make a better match.’

  ‘We had thought this may be the reason for your visit. But we had thought for Pandu. She would make–’

  Gandhari imagined Bhishma waving his arm dismissively. How she wished she could see them with her own eyes! ‘No, we have someone else in mind for Pandu. It will not be Gandhari.’

  Another ruler would have been more diplomatic, employed charm and grace in the refusal. But austerity had made Bhishma hard and stern with others as he was with himself.

  This is what a vow does to you, Gandhari repeated to herself.

  It was Shakuni who saw his sister’s face crumple in front of him, the soft whimper that escaped between her trembling lips, her eyes that turned upwards in accusation at the devas for letting her down.

  It was not that Dhritarashthra would not be king. Well, not just that. There were troubling rumours of his feebleness, of how he cried out in the middle of the night, his paranoia that assailants were lurking around intent on murdering him. His bitterness at being passed over in favour of his younger brother was ill-disguised and he had become a piteous unpleasant man, so it was said. She could not tolerate the idea of him as her husband.

  Shakuni punched his fist into the wall. He hissed: ‘Marry our one princess off to a blind man? Never! How dare they insult us like this!’

  Gandhari was sobbing silently, careful to not make a sound that could give them away. Shakuni reached over to awkwardly pat her shoulder. This was the first time she could recall this odd brother of hers touching her. He ordinarily shrank from human contact.

  Shakuni became jumpy and started pacing.

  Subala requested time to consider the proposal. Bhishma said he needed an answer before he left the next day and, all things equal, he would prefer to take Gandhari back with him in the morning.

  Shakuni lost control then and tore into the audience chamber, yelling hoarsely that his sister would never be married off to the blind prince, that she and their family would not be insulted like this. Gandhari ran after him.

  Subala had to physically restrain his son who was now ranting incoherently, frothing at the mouth, trying to claw at Bhishma’s face. Gandhari pleaded with Shakuni to back down. She threw herself between Bhishma and her brother, turning her tear-stained face, coloured red in embarrassment to Bhishma beseechingly, pleading with him silently to forgive her brother.

  Bhishma had a look of such undisguised contempt on his face that all the tears in Gandhari – behind her eyes and clogging her throat – froze and hardened into iron.

  I will never be shamed in front of him again, Gandhari vowed to herself.

  His lips had curled in disgust, his eyes reflecting his shock and outrage. It was as if to say he had expected them to be uncouth but not this wild, not so unpredictable. As if he had not quite bargained for this.

  Well, Gandhari thought to herself, maybe his spies are not as good as ours.

  Some hours later, after B
hishma had been placated, fed and put to bed, after Subala and his wife conferred at length in private, Gandhari and Shakuni were summoned by their parents into their private bed-chamber. Gandhari knew her fate as soon as she saw the sad resignation in her father’s face and the quiet triumph in her mother’s.

  Shakuni snarled: ‘You cannot possibly consider it, Matashree, You know what they say about the blind, Respected Mother! How can you give her away to such an inauspicious man? He will doom her life! How can you send her to that snake pit of a palace, ruled over by a fisherman’s daughter and the bastard princes who were not even sired by the king?’

  Gandhari’s mother shook her head. ‘Whatever you say, the Kuru lineage is one of the most prestigious in all of Bharat. Well, even if not queen, at least she will be part of a good dynasty. And anyway, what choice did we have, after your disgraceful little outburst? How could we let such an insult to Bhishma stand? We will be shunned if we do not make amends. She will marry the blind one. That is it.’

  Gandhari looked at the floor as she walked over to her father. She swallowed hard so that her voice would not waver as she addressed him. She looked into his face that was beginning to wrinkle, his hair that was mussed and greying, his sudden frailty and helplessness. His eyes darted from hers like an anxious rabbit.

  She placed her hand on his forearm, her eyes fixed on his hand. That hand that had held her protectively against him as they rode on horseback through the forests on hunts. That had pointed out to her on the map all the kingdoms of Bharat, teaching her patiently their history, culture and geography as she sat on his lap. That hand that had patted her to sleep on so many nights as a child. He was not a usual father.

  She lifted her eyes to gaze at his face steadily: ‘Pitashree, Respected Father, this is not what you trained me for.’

  ‘Everything I have taught you, you have learned well. You will use your knowledge well.’

  ‘Just as we are in the hinterlands here, I will be banished to the hinterlands of Hastinapur.’

  It was rumoured that Dhritarashthra preferred to sit in the darkened rooms in the most remote recesses of the palace at Hastinapur. Too many voices, too much activity, too much light overwhelmed him.

  ‘Madhu, it is for the best. You will be the most virtuous and devoted of wives. You will be his strength and guide him through his infirmities.’ The steel of command had re-entered his voice. ‘You will be all that I have raised you to be, and you shall be his wife, bringing honour to our name and clan.’

  Gandhari looked away. She had known the gods were fickle. She had known she could not trust her mother. But she had not expected betrayal from her father. Her hands and stomach turned cold. It was as if the blood had stopped flowing in her veins, as if she had stopped living, as if the Madhu she had once been was no more.

  It was the night of the full moon. The palace, the sandy banks of the river where she worshipped every dawn and dusk, the gardens with the hardy plants, the only ones that could cling to life in this desert region, the dirt trails she rode horseback with her father, they were all limned in silver moonlight. At midnight, Gandhari slipped out from her chambers, where the maids were packing her belongings and gathering together the jewels, costly garments and other gifts that would constitute her bridal trousseau.

  She slowly wandered the grounds. She touched the blooms of the rose bushes that her mother had planted when Gandhari was still a child, her fingertips lingering on their petals, so easily crushed and bruised. She visited the stables and patted the heads of her favourite horses, careful not to wake them. She walked by the river, listening to the murmur of the waves as they bid her farewell. She listened intently for messages or clues. But if they were there she could not decipher them. She turned to the rippling water that had once carried to her the form of Shiva, the blessings of the devas. She stared hard into its moonlit surface, but all she saw was her own reflection, dim in the dark night.

  She walked back to the palace and tried to remain hidden from view as servants scurried to prepare for her departure. She walked the hallways that were remote and deserted. She trailed her fingers against the wooden walls. Wood always felt frail to her, easily splintered, susceptible to burning and breaking. She watched the flames from the oil lamps, how they flickered and danced against the painted walls and thought how easy it would be for them to consume the walls, the whole palace, her family, the kingdom. It was her father who taught her how to identify weakness, how to root it out and replace it with iron strength. Iron. When she was a child, when she lay down to sleep while her father and brothers were away in battle, when she feared the invaders would invade her palace and home, her bedchamber, she had dreamt of iron castles. Castles so strong their walls could never be breached.

  She had heard that in the south the palaces were built of stone. But stone walls could not protect you from your husband, from his family.

  I will be my own iron fortress.

  She had made her way to the furthest reaches of the palace. Here even the sounds of the bustle in the main chambers did not reach. Here her path was shrouded in darkness, as the maids forgot to light the lamps or simply did not bother. No one of import came here. Here she could walk more freely, allow the tread of her feet to carry noise. She moved faster.

  There was a chill in the air. It climbed up her spine. She would not hurry, not betray that sign of fear. But as she made to turn around, the sound of high-pitched chanting and sputtering caught her ears. Despite herself, she drew forward. In the corner, at the bend of the hallway, was a room that had no door, not even a curtain for privacy. Soot had blackened the walls and the smell of damp chopped wood stacked haphazardly in the corner of the room, and burnt offerings of substances she could not identify, singed her nostrils. What should have been auspicious, repelled her.

  In the middle of the room sat a half-naked wild man, tending to a sacrificial fire. But this was not the fire that she knew. The fire of yajna, of the sacrificial rites, was bright and benevolent, emanating warmth and light, sinuously undulating into the forms of the devas to whom the offerings were being carried. This fire was a dim, sickly orange that hunched over the smouldering logs and dried cow-dung cakes in the bottom of the fire pit, forking out its limbs, like an old humpbacked woman. It sputtered and sizzled angrily, protesting when offerings were dropped into it rudely by the man, like a serpent turning on its master.

  As her eyes lifted to the man tending the fire, she found he was staring at her intensely, even as he continued pouring the ghee and strange herbs she had never seen before into the fire. His hands were coated with powders of crushed substances emitting unpleasant odours, and he flicked them carelessly into the fire, not bothering about the powder that spilled over around the fire pit, dirtying the floor.

  The fire priests of the palace were always so meticulous that not one drop of ghee, one pinch of herbs or seeds, should miss the fire pit. The offerings were meant for the devas; to be so clumsy and careless was to disrespect and deprive the devas of their due.

  Finally, she recognized him. He had come to the palace years ago, a wandering ascetic, in search of shelter and appointment. Gandhara did not have a local population of brahmanas who could perform the yajnas and present the teachings to the royal family of Dharma, philosophy, statecraft, rites, yoga and other matters that were the province of brahmanas. The brahmanas had to travel far and wide to attend gurukulas where they could be properly taught, and they rarely returned. The frontier kingdom was too wild for their liking.

  This was a cause of dismay to Gandhari’s mother. Those few who stayed in Gandhara were the dregs of the brahmana class, some of whom never finished their education or were expelled from gurukulas for perhaps unsavoury reasons, although there were a rare few who stayed in Gandhara because they preferred to be there, because they wanted to continue their studies of arcane texts and rites undisturbed. When this one had come, he had wandered straight into the audience chamber where Subala was holding court – it was the day of the mont
h when any subject could approach the king and present their requests to him – so the guards were unable to keep him from entering the chamber. He was dressed only in a loincloth; his buttocks visible. He had not bathed in weeks and the rank smell and sight of him made people turn away in disgust, recoiling from his very presence.

  Gandhari’s mother swooned and was ushered away by her handmaidens.

  The man approached the throne and addressed Subala in a rough dialect, the words rumbling like an uncomfortable cough in his throat. His voice was rusty and in disuse, almost feeble, as if he had not talked in months. Perhaps he had not.

  The man, who offered no name, rattled off that the palace had no astrologer, no rajpurohit, no rajguru, no royal priest or teacher. Subala scoffed that he had no need for such men, that he relied on good governance and his own battle-earned wisdom. Then, in a flash, so fast that even Subala’s bodyguards could not hold him back, the man climbed up the ten steps that led to the platform on which Subala’s throne sat and leaned over the throne and whispered something into Subala’s ear. As the guards pulled him back, the man snarled a laugh and his eyes gleamed in victory. Subala had paled, his fingers that rested on the lion heads carved onto the arms of his throne trembled and his eyes widened, searching the room until they finally landed on Gandhari. Subala stared at her while the guards dragged the man away. As the man passed her, he winked at her lewdly.

  All thought that he had been dispatched, far away from Gandhara, that the bodyguards had thrown him out or maybe even had him killed. But later that day, Subala had visited Gandhari in her bedchamber as she was about to sleep, something he had not done since she was a child. He paced the small room, deeper in worry than she had ever seen him. Finally, he sat down next to her on her bed, and held her hand.

  His face was framed in a square patch of moonlight and as his eyebrows scrunched together in deep thought, his eyes intent on his daughter’s face, his hand gripping hers tightly, Gandhari thought he had never looked so dear to her.