The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  The very roots of my hair stirred.

  Ghatotkacha roused the blood of battle blood in all of us. We hurtled forward screaming in a way I never heard by day. The night releases hidden forces. It was like being in a jungle with animals that had turned into men. No aim was certain. The flying javelins were seen when it was too late.

  The yells of fear from Dronacharya’s men told us that Ghatotkacha had cut a wedge into the enemy. We tried to follow him and crashed into his Rakshasas who turned on us. One of them fell onto our chariot with a sudden thump. His sharp teeth grinned up at me. They say Rakshasas suck your blood while killing you. My mind made fierce attempts to recollect the Rakshasa word for friend. I yelled the word for enemy. He grabbed my throat.

  “That is Arjuna, moron.” My name in Krishna’s mouth made him draw back to look at me. He clasped me in his arms and kissed me on my chest. Then with a grunt he leapt into the night. My laughter was stillborn. Innumerable ghostly forms lit up the sky. A deep despairing moan came from both sides, a note that seemed to disturb the universe. Red eyed, trunkless heads released by Ghatotkacha’s maya floated over the enemy. The hair was stiff like that of bandicoots. I saw some of our men turn tail.

  Darkness fell again which meant that Dronacharya or Ashwatthama had neutralized the maya. No one else knew how. Then the sky was lit with yet another astra, and by its light we saw a swarm of Rakshasas behind Ghatotkacha. When Ashwatthama wounded him, the swarm dispersed but not before killing Vahlika, Bhoorisravas’ greatfather, the oldest warrior on the field. By day they would have guarded him. In the melee Drupada lost his younger sons.

  Ghatotkacha was wounded and carried off the field; we felt the earth crack and divide beneath our chariot wheels. The horses’ hooves were caught in crevices, from which flames shot out. The very earth was ablaze. I felt as though it might all spin away from us. The elephants began to squeal in fear and anger. They lumbered back and forth and smashed the chariots. Then, suddenly, the fires died. The cracks swallowed them and closed.

  The leaders of both sides agreed that the men should hold up torches for us while we, the mounted warriors, would fight. All around the field they stood on broken chariots and on dead elephants. In the dim light many of us found ourselves with unexpected neighbours.

  Ours was easily the strangest of them all. Above the confused din, we heard a voice that was familiar and sneering even in its anger.

  “You stupid senile Brahmins!” It was Karna. He had his back to us. “Do you think I cannot kill Arjuna? I could cut out your tongue,” he shouted. Kripacharya unsheathed his sword. “Karna,” I began to challenge him, Krishna whipped us past.

  Sanjaya told us how it ended: Ashwatthama came upon them and asked what was worth arguing about on a night of battle. Was it not bad enough trying not to kill each other unintentionally without doing the Pandavas’ work for them? Karna spat out, “He thinks I cannot kill your friend Arjuna.” Whereupon Kripacharya called him a great inflated autumn cloud that does not give a drop of rain.

  Ashwatthama told him that I was twice the bowman he was and ten times as noble. How many times I wished that I had myself heard Ashwatthama say this to heal what was to come.

  But for now I could not control my anger at being hurried away from Karna by Krishna: “You think the Shakti Indra gave him bears my name? He can shoot it only once and before he does I will have sliced his throat. There is only one way for you to see that I am more than his equal, Krishna, and that is for me to kill him now.”

  “Not yet. The night is Ghatotkacha’s time for work. Our task is still to guard the king from Dronacharya’s net. They are sure to take advantage of the dark and if they capture Eldest what are we fighting for?” Only the thought of Eldest, rolling dice within the crystal palace once again, prevented me from protesting any further.

  Krishna sent Ghatotkacha there instead to help Satyaki in his fight with Karna. Ghatotkacha placed his bald head at Krishna’s feet as he had always done and then he jumped, agile as a panther onto my chariot’s terrace and embraced me, defying me to take the perfume from his hair. I stroked his head and gently tugged the ear and told him to guard Satyaki’s life and frighten Karna. He flashed his sharpened teeth at me and said: “Paternal Uncle, my power comes like big sea in night. Feel no pain from wounds. Drona not know this, otherwise he never fight at night with me.” He held me once again.

  From atop his elephant he bowed to us. The first thing that he did was cut Jatasurya’s head off and drop it on the feet of Duryodhana in his chariot.

  “Do not run, Uncle,” he screamed. “I be back with head of Karna. They say in our wild part, no go to king without good gift.” His screaming filled the sky before he moved away with maniacal laughter. They sent another Rakshasa against him; he cut his head off, then retrieved it and from his elephant he shied it down at Duryodhana’s feet. The Kaurava chariot warriors held back from him. Karna alone raced in to meet him. Duryodhana called his army out again. Anguish confused his orders. The men with streaming torches ran this way and that. Torch stems snapped and sent the oil-soaked rushes sideways on heads and arms. Ghatotkacha waged fire. The waves of men that surged towards us broke as on reefs before they reached the shore. Duryodhana was paralysed but Karna, though he fought a losing battle, never ceded. Both sides knew that unless the day cut Ghatotkacha’s powers short he would win the war for us tonight.

  Karna’s final gift to Duryodhana was to fire the arrow meant for me at Ghatotkacha. Afterwards I often wondered how I might have felt if I had to sacrifice the Pashupata meant for him. Ghatotkacha rode regally on his elephant like Yama on his buffalo. It looked as though Karna would be his victim, too, and yet I knew that my warrior’s vow to kill him had to be fulfilled. Lord Shiva had granted it to me.

  Suddenly, Ghatotkacha’s elephant ran amok. Not even Ghatotkacha could control him. Trumpeting and squealing with the pain from many arrows, he drummed over the battlefield wherever the men were most densely concentrated. Duryodhana pitted his conch against the elephant’s cries to call the chariot warriors in defence of Karna. We heard Ghatotkacha cackling. “Come, come, my babies,” his cackling rose to a demonic yell. “My sweet darlings. I need some many gifts for your king.” The Kaurava horses reared and whinnied and tried to get away. They flung their heads this way and that. Their charioteers leant back against the seats and cracked their whips. Duryodhana’s elephant force was called in from the right but they trumpeted their panic too and huddled close. “Who wants present head gift for Duryodhana? Come, come to Ghatotkacha.” No one but Karna and Duryodhana stood fast. Beside each other they could brave the world. Duryodhana hurled insults at his chariot warriors, but it was the horses that could not be brought around. Duryodhana and Karna drove through the troops, cracking their whips to round up the cavalry and elephantry as though they were so many heads of cattle. Then all of a sudden as though a spell were broken the whole of Duryodhana’s army rushed up to us. It was in this stampede that Drupada and Virata lost their lives. We did not learn of it till morning. Now Ghatotkacha, in his battle fury, called up something I had not only never seen before, but had never heard of. His image grew enormous, and bathed in a fierce white light, it rose against the sky. And then the night was dark once again with Ghatotkacha booming syllables like maces hurled into a void.

  “W-nnnnnnn, shnnnnn, frrrrrrr…” The sounds had no direction and they were indistinct as though there were more sounds behind them that we could not hear, but which attacked the enemy and frightened us. I remembered escaping from the burning Palace of Delight and how we had lost sense of direction as we ran helter-skelter in the tunnel. Now, too, we heard a crackle but knew not where to run. We saw the outline of a bowman. The arm slid back and let the arrow fly without a jerk, as though the night were cushion for its elbow. There was no recoil. Only Karna and I could shoot so smoothly. Arrows fled from him like oil driven by wind. They flashed right up to Ghatotkacha and veered away just as the animals had done. The smell of burning grew and then t
here was an explosion. At first it seemed like harmless fireworks, but soon two flames leaped up and began to spread. Each flame divided into two and each of these became two flames again. The muttering of the men turned into screams. The Kauravas turned and fled. The fires followed them and caught at them with fingers.

  “Karna, Karna!” yelled Ghatotkacha. “Run home now!” The fire was all around both Duryodhana and Karna but had no power over them. It caught only the men that ran away. The flames leapt up beyond Duryodhana’s white umbrella. Duryodhana and Karna were within the magic circle of their courage. No fire penetrated it. You could feel the thing that bound them. I thought of my first battle fought with Krishna at my side. I saw Karna’s hand reach for his blue metal quiver.

  “You fool, that Shakti is your life,” yelled Duryodhana from his chariot and leapt to try and seize it. He grappled for the arrow and it became a wrestling match. Duryodhana was the wrestler but Karna sat upon him and pinned his arms down with his legs. Leaning back, he shot his arrow as Ghatotkacha’s mount screamed past. It blazed diagonally upward, a streak of blue that entered Ghatotkacha’s chest. I have often wondered whether I could have shot that arrow. At the time I thought it came from some god’s hand.

  “Karna, Karna! You are courage man,” Ghatotkacha shouted out. His elephant slowed down and then the jewelled trunk went back to touch him, whimpering grief. Eldest and Bheema sped towards him. And so did we. The elephant put out his trunk and swung the king up first and set him down inside the varandaka and then the trunk went down for Bheema. They caressed our nephew’s head and tried to coax him down. As we reached the elephant we heard him say, “Do not worry, Uncle. Night is friend and protector. Nothing happen before morning. There is more work for Ghatotkacha.” He pulled the arrow from his chest. I sucked my breath in. Eldest placed his hand over the wound but there was no blood. Ghatotkacha sat erect throughout the chaos. Soldiers were sleeping on their feet. Our charioteers nodded as they drove and when their hands jerked, turned their horses into our elephants or other chariots. Weapons clattered to the ground from the hands of sleeping men. Torch bearers set themselves alight and woke up screaming in pain. This was not war. Krishna suggested that I ought to speak to Dronacharya. We sent our herald with a flag of truce.

  The response of my guru was: “You always were too soft, Arjuna. You want to save these people’s lives, but for what?” He had a colder gaze than I had ever seen in him before, yet he was only barking. I did not retort, as that might have brought forth his bite. “It does not pay to save the lives of people. What do you think, Arjuna?” I thought of Ghatotkacha, and my heart softened. “Answer me, you pathetic fool!” yelled Dronacharya.

  “No, I have never found that, Gurudeva,” I remembered what had been foretold: Dronacharya would be possessed. I humoured him as one does madmen.

  O you “Gurudeva” me, do you?” He rolled his eyes and retrieved a memory from the distant past. “Do you remember…the crocodile?”

  “I remember.”

  “If you had left me to the crocodile you would not have been left the task of killing me.” A Kshatriya does not think like this. I saw his mind was Brahmin to the end. “You know the penalty for killing gurus. Yes, I see you know. Because you saved my life, I granted your wish. That does not make you any less a fool. A noble fool. Beware, Arjuna, of nobility. I have no time for it. Goodnight.” He turned and blew his conch and yelled, “Arjuna wants to sleep. We cannot fight without Arjuna or these full-of-Dharma Pandavas will all complain,” he cackled. Then he shouted out in apparent insanity, “Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!” Without another look at me he crumpled on his chariot seat and was asleep himself. Conches tore into the night.

  We unharnessed all the horses and then rubbed them down and watered them. I lay down, looking up to where the Makara constellation was in the ascendant. It seemed that I had just drifted into sleep when something prodded me. “To arms!” a harsh voice yelled. I felt my brain knock against my skull in protest. But my bones and sinews knew their guru’s voice, so I leapt up as when he tested me in bygone days. In the heart of night he made us sing or whistle to prove we had our wits about us and were instantly awake. “To arms! To arms!” He could not wait to fight again. For this he earned the hatred of so many men that I do not know how he survived the night.

  As dawn approached we felt Ghatotkacha’s spirit hovering about us. “Ghatotkacha, to you I owe my life.” Lifting his hand up to the centre of his forehead he looked at me and smiled.

  “Your chariot driver, not me.” He gazed at Krishna. Krishna bowed low and joined his hands respectfully. Ghatotkacha stood and then bowed very low. When he straightened up his wound was bleeding and then we saw his form expand in size and, like some great bird, take flight.

  With the first cock-crow we saw another shift of light; Ghatotkacha’s form blurred. His chest stopped bleeding and as his form grew faint a host of forest spirits flew towards him and ferried him away. We gazed and gazed. After some time we did not know if what we saw was Ghatotkacha smiling down with folded hands or shifting-cloud formations. In my mind another image formed. It was Ghatotkacha the baby.

  After we fled the Palace of Delight, he came to us, a present from the gods. He had awakened trust and love in us again, as only little children can when you have flown the burning traps devised by men.

  Bheema was sobbing.

  There was no time or energy to mourn after the night of battle. We were too tired and too stunned, and many, who were dear to us, and kin had died. Our queen’s father had been killed, King Drupada who was our father when we were refuge-seekers in a potter’s hut, and so was our other father King Virata who had sheltered us during our thirteenth year of exile. He had made us kings again when we were paupers.

  Ghatotkacha had saved my life. My heart swelled with pain and anger and would not be soothed by grief.

  By the first light we saw deserters come to us in droves, like whipped dogs, red-eyed, with broken arms and mangled bodies. They shook their fists and slapped their armpits, shouting, “Death to the Brahmin fiend. Death to Dronacharya. Death to the madman.” They milled around our camp bursting into cries of hatred like sudden thunderclaps that died as they sat down or looked around in silence at a world that had not kept its promises.

  They had killed their comrades in the dark and their faces bore the traces of horrified guilt. They had the look of men who have lost their bearings, who have no calling. The chariot warriors had driven home, and some of the horsemen too. These men that came to us were uneaten morsels after a great feast of death.

  We had to round them up and tend their wounds, feed them, and serve them words of comfort with their meat and wine. Some of them were lads but all had heard about us, and being in our company they called to mind the dice game and the House of Lac and Wax. Still standing in the shadow of the night’s adharma, they saw in us light and hope. We were a legend verified, and a glowing ember from it set them all ablaze. Many chose to fight for us though just as many merely wished us victory before they set out for their homes. But either way they had diminished Dronacharya’s force by half. And they had told us what we could have guessed: the mad acharya would unleash his astras if we did not kill him first.

  Morning brought strange stories and Satyaki’s was not the least. You could not know whether the shape emerging from the nightmare would turn into a friend or foe. Duryodhana, undoubtedly preparing for a friend, had found himself against Satyaki’s sword and called: “Ah, Satyaki, Satyaki, do you remember in Hastina when we went swimming in the lake and a storm made us refuge-seekers in the woodman’s hut? How good the roasted barley smelt and tasted. I wish I had let Yudhishthira take the throne.” Satyaki had run from him, appalled.

  Bleakly Satyaki tugged at everybody’s arm to tell his story.

  I shook him off.

  “It does not matter now,” I kept on saying. But suddenly my mind was blurred. My arms were pierced by little tremors as when lightning enters water while you are standing in it. Th
en lightning glanced off my shoulder and left my armour hanging like a rag. My hands flew up to save my eyes. Your body will think for you at such a time. Out of a clear sky rain descended in fine needles that burnt their way into our flesh. We started running for the river. We were like panic-stricken animals and could not hear what was being shouted by the others.

  I had jumped into the river and something kept repeating itself in my ear, some sound that tried to shape itself into a meaning. At last I understood: “The counter astra The counter astra” It was Krishna. His fingers clutched my hair. I said the mantra, and the rain flew upwards as though shot back into the sky.

  When I left the water I saw my fine silk cloth was grafted to my leg.

  13

  “Some devil has possessed his heart. It is not the acharya that you knew.” Krishna tried to bend my will.

  I saw the glitter in my guru’s eyes again. I heard his madman’s laughter, but if your father has gone mad, you do not kill him. It is against the Kshatriya code to kill a woman or a madman or someone rising out of sleep.

  Yes, this commander had to die. But this was not the way to do it and I was not the Kshatriya to use such means. It was worse than using poison. It was worse than arson. Not even Kanika who had devised the Palace of Delight for us could have thought of such a ruse. Krishna wanted me to tell our guru that his son was dead. Our guru always said that life had lost its savour after he came back from Drupada. It returned the day I won a kingdom for him, but if Ashwatthama could not rule it he would not want to live. Dronacharya would always quote the Vedas: “Here is your son Mortal Man, here is your immortality.”

  Krishna was waiting for my answer. But the demon wore my guru’s form and I had never lied to Dronacharya. Krishna was indeed suggesting that we tell him that his son was dead.