The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  “Such speed must be reserved for arrows,” he would say. And after a time, I learned to rein myself before I came into his sight, steadying my breath.

  “Kripacharya is a Guru for one’s mature years and for such pupils as Parikshita,” Subhadra once said.

  “Is he very different from Abhimanyu or myself?” I asked her smiling. I knew he was, but wanted her to say so. “He is a warrior too. Look at his arms, look at the way his hand dips to his quiver.”

  “He is different,” was all that she would say. “He is different from anyone that I have ever known.” She did not say from any other child. We saw him as a person from his day of birth. Parikshita had loved our mother and spent much time with her. When she left, Uttaraa told him his greatgreatmother would return but he only said, “She will not. She wants to go,” and did not cry. He understood well the need to be free.

  He had a pet deer that he found stiff and cold one morning. It was the first time that he had seen a dead body. He ran weeping into my arms. I told him that the soul of this little deer was now free to roam the universe. He listened, and with the tears still wet upon his cheek said that we must perform rites for him. I improvised a special deer ritual and we kindled fire in a pit with fire that we brought down from the palace homa. It was Parikshita’s idea and innocent enough, but rather thoughtless of us elders to allow it as the priests were not in favour of such frivolity and complained that the ritual had been misused and the fire profaned. They made a great show of quenching it and sprinkling all the surrounding rooms with water. “The old order changes,” grunted Dhaumya. No blame could be pinned on Parikshita for he was not yet five, but we were all given minor penances to atone for our wrongful actions, which we performed cheerfully. The deer’s death had blown a breath of something painful and finite into Parikshita’s life. So we were happy that his other love, the parrots, were long-lived creatures. Every day we watched them for some time and never tired of their antics. One of the parrots sounded just like Shakuni when he said, “I’ll wager you my ruby necklace and my triple strand of pearls.” And immediately a voice shot back from the second parrot upon his perch swinging violently backwards and forwards, “Who won, who won?” I think, as much as any other thing, this washed the dice game clean of bitterness. So when one day we found the great cage empty save for the miniature gambling board of gold and ivory and the golden perches, we were distressed, for our own sakes as well as Parikshita’s. But it was he who had freed them. He explained as best as he could and asked me if I did not think that it was difficult for them to do the same thing every day just for us to laugh at. With hunched shoulders and staring eyes he croaked their phrases. “Just like the priests,” he said.

  With such a king as Parikshita, the old order would indeed be changing.

  17

  One day when I needed to see Eldest, I spent much time waiting for the servitors to find him. Today he was in none of his accustomed places and was finally discovered in Uncle Vidura’s palace.

  I found Eldest kneeling at the foot of Uncle’s bed with his head upon it. I felt a great surge of protectiveness as though he were my younger brother. Kneeling beside him, I touched my fingers to the bed and to my eyes.

  “Eldest,” I said, “let us go and find them. I long to see them too.” He did not answer and I saw he could not. He was weeping. I felt a tightening of my throat. The room was full of Uncle. I loved his palace. It had simplicity and grace with each thing in its appointed place. Incense was burning in a golden censer and auspicious calendula and mango leaves filled the air with their blessing. In silence we walked through the rooms together. Our mother had lived here during our forest exile.

  We looked into the chamber where Krishna had stayed when on his embassy to stop the war. It was in that room that she had hammered out the message: we must fight or be no children of hers.

  “Let us go and visit them,” I said. Eldest turned to me. Only once before, in silence, had we understood each other so, when we spoke of Karna after the war. “Sahadeva too is pining for his mother. Her life has been bereft of him for so many years. Bestow this gift on her.”

  Not only Draupadi and Uttaraa and Yuyutsu’s wife, but all the widows of Uncle Dhritarashtra’s sons wanted to come and could not be denied. Next came the old retainers, now retired, humbly asking to be allowed to press their masters’ feet once more. In the end, Eldest invited all the nobles of Hastina who wanted a last darshan from the royal family. Many of the ladies who would accompany us had led such sheltered lives that their little painted feet had left their fathers’ palaces only to walk into their husbands’. We did not even know exactly where our uncles and mother would be found, but once Eldest had made his mind up he waved off all objections.

  The preparations were many. After a long discussion with Sahadeva, Bheema told Eldest that the journey would be too hard on many of the ladies, but the message came back that all the ladies of all the great houses already had one foot raised in anticipation of the journey to come. The hopes and preparations for it had filled the widows’ lives again. There was no turning back. I had intended to suggest I go out in an advance party, but it was decided that for good or ill we would set out together.

  Our visit to the forest had grown into a major expedition. Fortunately we had learned much about supplies and logistics during the war. Now it stood us in good stead. Pavilions were set up along the way, and Uncle Dhritarashtra’s rest houses were stocked with provisions. I think I fully realized the magnitude of what we had undertaken only when I saw the elephants’ varandakas that the carpenters were preparing for Uttaraa and her party. They were lined with big shelves and little silk-topped ones. Beside the seats were small beds. Uttaraa did not know where the idea had started, but it seemed that all the ladies were preparing these “forest Varandakas” in which one could carry everything from clothes, oils, cosmetics, perfumes, jewel boxes and fans to medicinal herbs and talismans.

  Royal ladies from neighbouring varshas, King Bhagadatta’s widow among them, joined us on the expedition and were equipped with moving granaries, wardrobes, and treasuries. Cooks, superintendents of kitchens, whole culinary establishments prepared to move out on elephants and camels. I did not know what Uncle, immersed in ascetic practices, would make of it all. And I had another concern.

  Not everyone who roams the forests is looking for his soul. Eldest assured me that he had thought of that: An army must accompany the expedition and I must lead it. That meant yet another granary and treasury to think of.

  18

  I was scouting ahead of the group for a place to set up the tents when I came upon Uncle Dhritarashtra sitting with closed eyes, wearing only a loin cloth and ashes. Before him was a shallow pit in which, stirred by the breeze, flickered a fire probably kindled from the flame carried from his homa room in Hastina. His skin had not been darkened by sun but had grown lighter and rougher of texture. You could see the veins. His beard was now white and scraggy. His eyes were closed and at first I was not even quite sure that it was Uncle Dhritarashtra and not some other ascetic. I signalled my men, who were just out of bowshot, away and stood looking at him. There was something in the silence that I did not like to break, and I felt the hair rise on my arms. There was an interdiction on my moving closer, an invisible circle that kept me out. It would have been Adharmic to greet him from a distance so I waited for a sign. Tremors began running up my spine. My head felt light and empty. Within its cavern a voice spoke, “Welcome, Son of Pandu.” Before the Palace of Delight, Uncle had always called us that, though not afterwards. My feet were rooted to the ground. The breeze blew stronger and lifted some dry grass stalks to the fire. They caught alight and carried the flame with them as they floated upwards before falling on dry leaf and grass-covered ground. As I stared, a worm of fire started wriggling towards Uncle’s knee. It flamed and darted at him and released me from the spell. I took my angavastra and beat the fire out, thinking that some God must have sent me timely.

  “Well done, Son
of Indra. This time you are on your father’s side.” He referred to the time that Krishna and myself had helped the God of Fire burn the forest, contrary to Lord Indra’s wish. His voice resonated.

  ‘Son of Indra’, he had said. I went to touch his feet and lay my head upon them. He raised me; his hands were cool and dry. His touch was light but firm.

  “Uncle, it is dangerous to sit so near the fire. The breeze carries the leaves and grasses to it. In your meditative state you would never know it.” He smiled, then chuckled. He had moved on from his old fears.

  “What do you know of what I see, Son of Indra? Never have I seen as I do now.” He spoke slowly, giving weight to every word. His voice had lost that old anxiety and he had not greeted me with ritual phrases as was his want. Now he began to sing a hymn to Agni in an old croaky voice.

  I think of Agni as father, as brother, as kinsman forever.

  He is infinite power among devas.

  He is the guest among men.

  His voice was pitched too high, and then would break, an old man’s voice. Yet there was sweetness in it.

  “Are you afraid of fire, Son of Indra?”

  “Once I was,” I said and bit my tongue, but this ascetic was beyond guilt.

  “We tried to burn you in the Palace of Delight. We should have known no one can burn the son of Indra.” He gave another chuckle like dry leaves and then was serious. “Your uncle saved you, and that was my salvation too. Soon I must meet your father.” There were no more tears in him. He had travelled far, far from his palace in Hastina and from the person he had been there.

  “I shall have to make amends to Agni for what I nearly made him do,” he said, nodding as though conferring with the deity. “I shall have to make amends so that I walk in friendship with him. One day soon he must take me and you will not be there to snatch me back.”

  “Uncle, why do you say that?”

  “It is something between the God and my soul. Lord Agni will purify me. He has made a promise to me. He will cleanse me of my guilt. Part is done already, but much remains. In the end we are all food for Agni. All of us. Why withhold the sacrifice? Son of Indra, you have driven Lord Agni away. It only means I am not yet ready to be cooked.” His mouth turned up a little and his fixed gaze shifted to my eyes. It was with other eyes that he looked at me. Power had come to him. He had surrendered.

  “Yes, Arjuna, for all these years, I sat upon a throne and never knew what kingship meant. It is not in palaces but in the forest that one learns.”

  I looked around at last and said, “Uncle, where is your hermitage?”

  He was silent for a long time, then he raised his hands’ palms up and turned his head from side to side.

  “This is my hermitage.” There was nothing but the river and the trees and the little sacred fire. He had said it without pride. This gave me pause. “You will find your mother and your aunt over on the other side.” He joined his palms in a courteous gesture of dismissal. I made my obeisance.

  Leaving my officers in charge of the tents and all the arrangements, I rejoined the group, then with Draupadi and my brothers crossed the little river, jumping from stone to stone.

  Our mother sat before a rustic shelter, pressing Aunt Gandhari’s feet. What I saw first was her snow-white cap of hair, but below the ears the hair was still dark, as was that of Aunt Gandhari, and it had become matted. It came like a shock to us. Not a day of their royal lives had passed in which their maids had failed to rub their skins with sandal oil and groom their hair and colour it when needed. Even as my eyes began to close in shame at seeing them thus, I heard a gulping sob and somebody rushed past. Sahadeva threw himself full length before Mother. With arms outstretched, he clasped her feet. We all moved forward slowly to give her time to draw her darling to his knees. She wrapped her arms around him. Her back did not straighten when she raised her head. The hardship of this life had made it permanently crooked. Slow anger began to burn in me, but when I saw the serenity in her face my wrath quickly subsided. Hers was the look of a deity that sits alone on mountain peaks. It was Eldest who remembered decorum and went to Aunt Gandhari first and touched her feet.

  “It is you, Yudhishthira,” she said, feeling his head and shoulders. “So you have found us out.” Her voice still rang with the authority that we remembered. A memory of curses lingered in it. A flock of crows wheeled overhead and crossed the river saying, “Kauk—kauk—kau,” as though summoned to work her spells.

  “Is Yuyutsu here?” she asked.

  “Mother, he is in the city guarding it.” Her mouth moved on hearing this. She was suppressing words. After a while they forced themselves out.

  “Have you then publically named him regent?”

  “Mother, not yet.”

  “Then why did you not bring him? Oh, not for me. This body did not bear him. But could you not have thought of the poor blind king?” She had not abdicated her torment. In the forest, it had doubled. My mother bore its brunt. I looked across at her. Yet she was like the mountain that is walked upon, but does not need to shake the burden off. She was like the earth itself that bears the mountain. Eldest did not answer, but touched Aunt Gandhari’s feet again and pressed her hands against his brow. Then he turned towards our mother. Sahadeva moved aside, but with one hand Mother kept him by her, while Eldest made his full prostration. When he rose, she stroked his head and ran her fingers musingly over his face, over his brows and chin and then his dominating nose as though in wonder that she had made this man. Bheema she embraced, and stroked his shaven lip. Then it was my turn; she smoothed my cheek bones with her palm as though to roll away my wanderlust. She smiled into my eyes from far away. Yet it was a look as intimate and close as I ever remembered from her. It must have been like this, I thought, when I was first put into her arms and she looked down at me, tired after the labour, yet tender through her need to sleep.

  But our features were as landmarks in a country she had all but left behind. She pointed with her chin towards a clump of trees beside the river. “Uncle,” she said. We could see a wisp of smoke. Before Nakula had got up to let Draupadi kneel in his place, Eldest broke decorum and stole away.

  Walking as lightly as I could, I followed him.

  As I came abreast of Eldest I saw him stare ahead. I looked, not understanding at first what seemed to be growing against the tree. The thing before us slowly took on human shape, a naked man, thin and covered with dust. A thick beard and leaf-tangled hair covered his face obscuring the features. The rest was skeleton. A hissing sound escaped my lips. It was Uncle Vidura. We both stood motionless, hands joined in salutation. As we watched, light began to play above his head where it hovered uncertainly, first above the vertex. Then slowly the light gathered, strengthened and drew his shape, now glowing strongly golden-white, above him. It began to move towards us. I felt a great benevolence. The emanation of Uncle gathered above Eldest. Then like a liquid light pouring itself into a vessel it entered Eldest, filling him part by part. When it was all absorbed, his body radiated energy. We stood transfixed in an eternal noon. The perfume of spring flowers surrounded us, flooding me with all the sweetness that Uncle Vidura had showered on us in our childhood. He had now no need of cremation. Burning is not for sinless ones. Uncle Vidura’s penance had cleansed him of even the slightest Adharma that all mortal men must bear. His consciousness had clung to his frail body, waiting for Eldest. This final departure was the act of a great soul, and the most humble and most noble that I had ever known.

  My mother did not weep. We sat in silence as the moon came up. After a time, she led Aunt Gandhari down to the river and they made their ablutions for the dead. When I saw that my mother had not shed a tear, I thought nothing could touch her. Perhaps the death of Karna had burnt most of her grieving out of her and what was left the penances consumed.

  It made Sahadeva and Bheema rage to see her carrying water on her hip for Aunt Gandhari, with Aunt Gandhari leaning all her weight upon her shoulder. Though I did not like to s
ee my mother who had been so gently bred in Kuntibhoja’s palace reduced to this, her face showed no complaint. It was Aunt Gandhari who wailed at the news that her husband’s brother was no more. “What will my lord do without his counsellor and brother? We are alone.” Indeed she had never left Hastina. She must have used up all the Punya of her austerities to curse Krishna and Dwaraka, for she still spoke of her sons with grief, and when we brought their widows to prostrate in front of her she mourned passionately with each of them.

  We spent some of the night in silence under a sky of auspicious constellations and finally laid ourselves to sleep on the bare ground next to our mother; all but Eldest who passed the night in meditation. I was reminded of another night in Panchala when we brought Draupadi home to our mother after I had won her at the Swayamvara. The sons born of that marriage were all gone from us. The others who had been fathers to us, Drupada, Virata and Uncle Vidura, had left their bodies. The life our mother led would not support her breath for very long. The world rested on us. The time had not yet come to join them yet I had never come so near to wanting to. Only the thought of Parikshita and Subhadra called me to Hastina. And always there was Krishna. He was the life that beckoned. As long as he was in the world, I would be pulled to him. Krishna’s life was not in hermitages; he had given me a law of life and action.

  Just before dawn a shadow amongst shadows stirred in the windless air. Eldest must have spent the night sitting apart like this. I went to touch his feet and sat beside him.