The Curse of Gandhari

by Aditi Banerjee

  ‘Tsk! I expected more of you than such simple-minded thinking. You are the daughter of Subala, that wily old king who fended off more foreign invasions and warlords than I could count. He raised you to be tough, to be shrewd. I had not expected such childishness from you.’

  Gandhari was weary. ‘Why dredge up the past now? What is done is done. There is no point going back over it now.’

  Krishna suddenly pressed his right thumb on her forehead, exerting pressure on her third eye. ‘Look again, Madhu, look again.’

  He pressed harder and suddenly she was back to the beginning, where it had all begun, once again.

  11

  And then she was back to where she had not dared to go in her memories – and where else did she travel nowadays but through the maze of her memories – back in her father’s palace, a young princess at sunrise on the day she had blindfolded herself.

  She saw herself stony-faced and impassive, the petulance of a teenage girl on the cusp of hardening into iron that would not yield to softness again. She saw the right hand of the princess, neatly folded over a square of cloth hidden from the others’ eyes.

  She was in the past but not. The taint of the death of all one hundred of her sons hung heavy in the air. The bitterness of knowing which husband lay in wait for her at the end of the weeks-long journey from her father’s house to Hastinapur slid like metal down her throat. She saw her father’s face, and she knew he was dead.

  The image wavered and blurred as she was about to lose herself in those other memories, the ones that called her like a siren, and then steadied again as the voice of Krishna sternly commanded her: ‘No, Madhu. Stay. Look more closely.’

  She wanted to look away. It was done. What point was there in looking back?

  But she obeyed. She made herself look away from the princess she had been, to take in the crowd behind her. She had not seen that then. She had faced away from everybody and then had turned back only when she was blindfolded. She had deliberately shielded herself from her father’s eyes. Even now, so many years later, in a vision that was not even the reality of what had happened, she feared seeing his eyes, his pain. Her heart thudded as she began to turn her eyes sideways to meet his eyes. They were wet with sadness and hope. It was the hope that made her breath catch in her throat. Her gaze sidled past him to Bhishma, the moment before she had blindfolded herself. His eyes were gleaming with hope, too.

  She steadied her gaze upon those two men, one who was the father of her childhood and the other the father figure of her womanhood, knowing she would see the grief, the disappointment, once she bandaged herself. She remained unflinching, waiting for the moment. In that pause, she caught in the corner of her eye a web of blue and gold. The colours were dazzling in the sunlight, enough to draw her forward, step by step, past all the old ministers gazing at her young self appraisingly, past her mother and cousins and brothers, who looked at her half enviously, that she would be leaving them all behind for the glamorous city of Hastinapur.

  She reached the back corner of the audience chamber that opened onto the palace gardens. Her eyes were fixed on that web of blue and gold. It was Krishna, of course it was, and from his palm thousands of slender golden threads flowed, looping over the gardens, tangled in the branches of the trees, weaving intricate designs across the bright blue sky, and then doubling back to be clasped in his palm again. She approached curiously. The threads fluttered and shifted in the breeze, in the gentle wave of his palm.

  She forgot that she despised him, so entrancing were the slivers of gold dancing in the sunlight. She reached out her hand and looked up at Krishna. When he nodded, she touched one thread, wanting to run it through her fingers – it was so delicate, it started to fray as soon as she touched it, splintering into broken fragments. She lightened her fingers, just hovering over the threads, and they began to twist and turn of their own volition and splayed themselves across her palm. They flattened on her palm and became wide ribbons, stringing together series of images, like strips of picture boxes, all beginning in the moment before she had tied that blindfold around her eyes. It was like a web of karma, of all the possible futures she could have had, beginning in that moment. They all rested in Krishna’s hand, each alternative fate she could have earned for herself.

  She spent what felt like hours wafting through them, one by one. In almost all of them, she was married to the blind prince. In some, she was miserable. In some, she was not. In some, she had the same hundred sons. In some, she had none. In some, she had only one. There was one that sparkled brighter than the others in the sunlight. As it unfolded itself before her, she saw herself as queen, clear-eyed and strong in reign. She did not have a happy marriage. But she was a good queen. Bhishma watched her with unabashed admiration and respect. She and Krishna jousted and sparred but were never enemies. Her sons, all one hundred of her sons, were born again and lived. They lived.

  She flung her hands in front of her face and cried out, ‘Enough, Krishna! Enough!’

  And then they were back, sitting in that forlorn mountain where no wind blew, where no light of the sun shone, where she was old and bitter and brittle once again. Her breathing was the only harsh sound in the world.

  Krishna remarked, ‘That’s the life I wanted for you. I thought, now here is a woman who deserves to be queen, of something greater than remote, backwater Gandhara. Here’s someone I could lose to, and still Dharma would win. This noble, strong, independent woman born to be queen.’

  ‘It is done. There is no going back. It cannot be undone.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Krishna.

  Breath was harder and harder to latch onto; her ribs and chest ached with the effort of drawing in oxygen, and she wondered why she even bothered now as she was already at the threshold of death. ‘Why did you show me that, Krishna? It is the past. It is all over now.’ It hurt more to go to the palace of her childhood, to see again her father and brothers, to live again through the moment she had decided to blindfold herself, more than being here in the battlefield. This was a pain she had almost become accustomed to.

  ‘Is it really over, Gandhari?’

  Her voice grew a little desperate. ‘Was it a mistake, Krishna? Is that what you want me to see? Was it wrong? Is – is what happened my fault, because of what I did then?’

  That had always been her biggest fear, that she had caused the war with her darkness, with her negativity, her self-imposed blindness. She had brought up her sons in the darkness of her world and then that darkness had spread over the entire world.

  Was it my fault? Had it begun with her, the war? She had been the one to give birth to the villains. Had she carried the fault within herself all along? Had she transmitted evil to her sons through her womb, through her blood tainted by the ills of her character, the anger and bitterness she had harboured inside for so long? Had it all started in that moment, when she had blindfolded herself?

  Bile rose in her belly, acid burning her from within. Her limbs felt like jiggling rubber, as if she would roll right down this mountain of skulls.

  She remembered how it felt, unfolding her hand, placing the square of cloth in front of her on that altar. That had made it sacred. She remembered her words, as plain and austere as that strip of cloth. She remembered the feeling of the presence Bhishma and her father behind her, knowing their displeasure and that she would never see them again. She remembered, as she tied that cloth so tightly her head hurt, that she had inside a small savage satisfaction, in hurting them as they had hurt her. That was not why she had done it, but a part of her had revelled in that feeling nevertheless.

  Tears came to her eyes now. Regret and remorse, too little and too late. Was I a bad woman? Was that why my sons lived and died as they had?

  She steeled herself. She was not a bad daughter. She was not a bad person. They had told her how pious the act of blindfolding made her, how devoted a bride, how virtuous a woman. That was the source of her power, her strength, this martyring of herself. What would sh
e have been without it?

  She had never seen her father again, her mother, her brothers, her maid, her friends, the mountains of her home. She had denied herself the sight of the sunlight, of flowers blooming on the trees, of her favourite horse. She had never seen the face of her husband, never given herself the chance to perhaps love him. She had never seen her children when they were born, never seen their faces, except as corpses or Duryodhana on the way to his death.

  She fingered the white cloth bandage, that had once felt as if it were the source of her strength, the symbol of her defiance and virtue. It had grafted itself into her skin until she no longer knew what was cloth and what was flesh.

  Her voice broke. ‘Was it a mistake, Krishna?’

  He did not reply. She knew her thoughts displeased him. She could feel his annoyance vibrate around her darkly, sizzling like lightning.

  She shook her head decisively. ‘It does not matter. What is done is done.’ She could never go back; she could never change what she had already done, what had already happened.

  Krishna’s voice warmed. ‘Now you begin to see.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘That you were asking the wrong question. There is never a right answer to a wrong question. Do not ask whether it was a mistake. Such a thing cannot be asked or answered.’

  Gandhari grew exasperated. ‘Then why did you take me back there? What’s the point? How can it matter now, now that I am almost dead? It is too late now.’

  ‘Is it?’

  She snorted and indicated her emaciated form, her thinning hair with streaks of bald scalp showing through, her skin that was beginning to wrinkle like an elephant’s hide.

  ‘Gandhari, what is it you saw when you were back there? Think carefully.’

  Part of her wanted to ignore him, to simply die in peace. If she said nothing, if she were simply quiet, perhaps he would let her go. This was giving her a headache and an ulcer, churning up things she had kept away, far away from the surface of her consciousness.

  But there was an urgency in his voice. It reminded her of the day that Draupadi was dragged into the court, when she had first seen him. How he had looked at her, challenging her to act. She had refused then. She did not want to refuse this time.

  It felt like she was sitting across from him in a game, but they were not on opposite sides. It was like being trained by her father. She was wary and cautious, and now she began thinking like a queen again, not just a woman waiting to die.

  She surveyed the scene again in her mind’s eye. She remembered how those threads had unfurled from his hand, how many threads of possibility spun themselves across the skies all the way to the horizon and beyond, all extending forth from that one moment of her blindfolding. She said softly, ‘A moment can change everything, for oneself and for the world.’

  He quietly urged her. ‘Do you not see? Even now, one moment could change so much.’ His voice was so charming, seductive. Suddenly she yearned to see Krishna, to see his eyes, the shape of his mouth, that auspicious form. So much she had missed through the blindfold; how much more she would have seen, how much more she would have learned, if she had not done it.

  She whispered, ‘It is too late now, Krishna. I am almost dead.’

  ‘Our lives never end, queen. They go on and on. We will come here again; we will play again. What you do now is just as important as what you did back then. It will shape your lives to come.’

  Tears began slipping down her eyes. ‘It is already done, Krishna. I ruined things already, and that will haunt me in my lives to come, too. The die is already cast.’

  Softly, ‘Roll again, queen. What is not yet done leaves open so many possibilities. You have this moment. Change your life in this very moment itself. Change the question you asked me earlier.’

  Earlier, she had asked, was it a mistake? Gandhari frowned, wondering what he meant.

  Krishna said, ‘Change it only a little, Gandhari.’

  She thought about it, carefully and logically, picking it up and examining it from corner to corner. Now she understood what he meant. Not: was it a mistake then – that was the wrong question – but: is it a mistake now?

  She voiced the question aloud to herself. She knew it was for her to answer. The thought of removing the blindfold now terrified her. It terrified her more than losing her sons had terrified her. It terrified her existentially. What was she without the blindfold? There was a dignity in the vow, in taking refuge in austerity. She had been the most devoted of wives, the most virtuous of women, the queen who had cursed a god. To remove the blindfold would be to forsake all of that.

  And yet.

  Maybe I have to let go of who I was if I want to become something else. And she did want to become something else, oh, how she did. Even at the precipice of death, she could not quench the thirst for life that had been suppressed in her for so long, the eagerness for a new canvas on which to paint the colours of a new life, a new self, a new beginning.

  Maybe it is not too late. She did not quite believe that, and yet, her fingers moved towards the back of the knot that she had tied every day for the past fifty-five years, brushing away the hands of her maids to do it herself – the blindfold that had embodied her devotion, her worship, her virtue, her penance, her sacrifice. It was an odd thing, to sacrifice a sacrifice. It felt a little weak, a little unheroic, a little like cheating. She was a woman who had always kept her vows. To break this vow now was tantamount to breaking herself.

  And yet.

  She untied the knot and set her eyes free.

  Immediately, Krishna stood in front of her. He shaded her eyes, tenderly rubbing her eyelids, shielding her from the harsh light. She could not bear to meet his eyes, so blindingly bright was the world suddenly. His touch was overwhelming. His fingers were so tender, so gentle, so patient as they rubbed her eyelids. Her sons had never been so gentle. She had never been held with such affection, not since she had left her father’s home.

  She blinked away tears and stepped back. Even now she could not bear for him to see her weak and vulnerable.

  She straightened herself and held her head up high, the queen once again.

  She had forgotten what it was to see the world in colour. The blue eggshell of the sky, the glow of daylight on the beige slicked mud of the battlefield, dirt mixed with something else. Even as she tried to look away, even as she kept her eyes on the mountain of skulls on which they stood, her eyes kept getting dragged back to Krishna. Despite herself, she gazed upon him, drinking in the vision of his face like a ravenous woman. His face was dusky sapphire blue, with black sparkling eyes, shark earrings dangling from his ears. His face was like a blooming lotus yet he held himself with regal grace – the marriage of the cowherd and the prince. It had been half a century since she had been a girl but there was something about the mischief playing in his eyes, in that lurking smile in those slender lips, that made her a girl all over again. It was a wonder she had resisted his charm for as long as she had.

  She waved her hand to indicate the field, the corpses that were no longer there. ‘I have responsibility for them.’

  Krishna said nothing.

  ‘I do.’ Just as she had been responsible for her sons, she felt responsible for every son, husband, father, every widowed woman, every childless mother, who had been on this field. Her eyes blurred. ‘There is no escape from karma, Krishna. There is no way to not pay for what has been done.’

  She surveyed the battlefield slowly, the way her father had trained her, pausing on each spot where once there was a corpse, one by one. She remembered their bodies, how they had appeared to her with wounds freshly bleeding, their hearts just stopped. She looked not just at her sons, but the sons of other mothers, the husbands of other wives, the fathers of children left orphaned. She looked where the sons of Draupadi were murdered in their tent, where the son of Arjuna had been trapped and killed, where Bhishma had lain fallen.

  Something began to slowly unravel in her, starting in her belly
, and unfurled upwards into a bloom of a new feeling, something she could not quite place.

  Krishna replied, ‘That is true. But it is also said that those who come to me never face ruin.’

  She wanted to snort, to scoff at the easy arrogance of this playful god. But she stopped herself. She turned towards him, eyes brimming with tears, and looked at him hard. How casually he stood, his fingers lightly splayed against his hip. Those fingers that had once tapped his thigh in a command to strike Duryodhana on the thigh, where he had been unprotected and vulnerable, those fingers that in that one tap delivered the death blow to Duryodhana. That mischievous mouth with that slight smile, that mouth that had urged Arjuna to let loose the arrows against Karna, her son’s staunchest defender, even when Karna was unarmed, against all the rules of war. Those eyes, the glittering black eyes that shone like the sun and the moon, those eyes that had been hard, unyielding as she had wailed before him, as she had grieved with abandon, as she had cursed him, as she had rebuked him, those eyes that condemned her coldly as a mother, a princess, who gave birth to sons for slaughter, who had gotten what she deserved.

  But there was a softness in those eyes, too, a kindness, an understanding. It made a lump form in her throat, and she believed him after all, that he could do it, that he had the power to transform curses into blessings, that nothing was impossible for him. Had she not seen it – how he thwarted her sons again and again, how he protected the Pandavas against all the odds, how he had kept alive their last heir when he had been at death’s door. Nothing was impossible for him.

  But he killed my sons; he orchestrated the war that destroyed my family.

  She tried to hold onto that thought, but it lacked the sharpness of anger and pain it once carried for her. It did not make her burn. It settled into her like a pebble into water, without ripple or turbulence. It just was.