The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata

by Maggi Lidchi Grassi

  “Bheema, Jishnu, we are going home,” called Eldest.

  All the others took it up. I turned to look at the twins and at Draupadi. She was smiling. Her teeth flashed white in her thin dark face, and she looked beautiful. Sahadeva and Nakula were laughing. That night we sat and talked about what we would do in our next lives.

  When on our way to Virata we had all chosen our castes—our disguises for the year of hiding in the court, none of us had chosen the guise of a warrior. I voiced my thought as we sat around the fire Bheema had lit. The nights were still and cool, and there were wolves and lions around. Everyone sat gazing at the flames. It might have been a yajna. Draupadi, with the Brahmins’ ritual gesture was casting leaves into the flames, her palm open to the sky. The only hymn was the call of night birds and insect voices, and our own silence, which like a strong cord, bound us to one another. We belonged together here. In the next life would we be scattered into the three worlds, and the ten directions? Whatever my task was, it had to be with Krishna. Krishna had chosen Eldest for the throne. Draupadi was Krishna’s Sakhi; we all belonged together. Agni had said that when the time came, Gandiva would be returned to me. Krishna and Subhadra, our son and our son’s son; we were linked together like a chain. My mind was creeping towards something, and suddenly I saw it as when you turn a corner and something new comes into view. It was Draupadi who spoke it aloud.

  “There has been so much suffering, so much sadness, pain and misery, but that is finished and it had to be. If it was useful for the world…” She cast more leaves into the fire. “As Krishna says it was, I want that we should be together again, whatever life holds for us.” She was weeping quietly. None of us could speak. She was beside me and I turned to her. The flames played on her features, grooved with the pain of her life. But she had thrown the bitterness away. Her mouth was in repose. I could not have held back even if the Gods had asked me to. I wiped her tears. Our eyes met and I nodded. Eldest, on the other side, took her hand in his. Suddenly we were all holding hands, all six of us. There were murmurs of “Sadhu” and broken sentences. We were all saying the same thing in one way or another. Dharma edged closer to Draupadi, and with his chin upon her lap, gazed at the flames.

  Draupadi was very tired but her eyes were peaceful. It was her spirit that would carry her until we reached the high mountains. She, our empress, the altar-born who had rescued us from servitude, would be the first to go. I did not want a world without her. Bheema was sobbing and trying to say something to the rest of us, but could not get his words out. Nobody could. She spoke again…

  “It takes a lot of living to understand. It had to be.” It was the way she said it, like a Rishi who sees beyond. After a long pause she sighed. “When Draupadi, the Altar-born, was seventeen and eighteen she was her father’s pride. She was his weapon of revenge.” I felt my body hair rise up.

  “She was to marry the Kshatriya who would never be defeated, and who would grind the pride of Dronacharya to powder. Then the whole of Bharatavarsha would recognize her and her father. They would pay homage. Poor father. Poor King Drupada. He had practised such austerity for all this, night and day, before the altar.” Another sigh wrenched from her depths. “Then all the kings of Bharatavarsha came to her Swayamvara to win this high prize. O my husbands….” She had never addressed us thus. The night was full of revelation. “Life is an irony. Jishnu, Prince Arjuna, who caused the humiliation of my father by Dronacharya, became my husband. Oh, the seeds of arrogance and revenge were sown in my birth, and in my brothers too. They sprouted greed and envy, and engendered the dice game. Kshatriyahood had to be wiped out. Shakuni was nothing but a false astra and the dice game was Draupadi’s victory. Only Krishna understood. Only he knew that if a princess of Panchala had not been so mistreated in the Sabha, the self-destruction of the Kshatriyas would not have been ignited. So, Draupadi the fire-born, was offered to the fire once again.” She opened her palms upwards in a gesture of acceptance. “It has taken me all these years to understand.” She had reached a state of complete surrender; she had truly become the sacrifice that goes willingly. Her self-offering released us and Eldest, from remorse.

  The Kamyaka forest is on a mountain slope, and we were climbing. Leaning on her staff, Draupadi insisted that she would walk, and Bheema need not carry her. From time to time she knelt down to smell and touch the flowers, or gaze in wonder at some blue-green or speckled eggs under a jut of rock. All along the streams and even on stony ledges, grew primulas in mauve, magenta, and rose, fragments of some great rainbow scattered by a Gandharva’s arrow. There were great beds of little purple buds and yellow buttercups. Bheema burned to get her the flowers from the Gandhamadana mountain, for which she had yearned so passionately during our exile. But now Draupadi would not let him go. “No, Bheema, why pluck them? Let them be. Leave them to their destiny. If it is mine, I shall get to them. We must stay together now.”

  Climbing mountains is so much like life. You see the high place that you aim for but you cannot get there in a single upward journey. You have to go up and then sometimes come even further down so that you hardly know if you are making progress.

  We found a path that pilgrims used. The foothills stood like sentries or warriors in a vyuha. In battle, when you have struck down the man before you, another takes his place and then another, and sometimes two, and so it was with the mountains. One day, beside a little river rushing over stones with its hundred voices which drowned ours, we rested and bathed our many blisters. Draupadi had no strength even for that. She lay upon the bank with Dharma inside the circle of her arm. Her lips were moving. Bheema and I went to her, but her eyes were far away and she was saying that we must leave her here.

  A little further on, there was a bridge and high above it, some rough shelters perched on rocks. Beyond, the trail suddenly branched into ragged paths that darted this way and that. Bheema and I took turns in carrying her. He could have done it all by himself, but it was a tacit recognition of my privilege and Draupadi’s. She opened her eyes, and they smiled at me in a way that said, more dearly than could have spoken words, “This is the best love. We are free of passion.” Dharma kept close to our heels as we carried Draupadi. Sometimes she would point towards the ground where primulas nestled amongst the rocks, and I would kneel to let her touch them. Song birds, compelled to sing by the clear light, made her lift her hand in quiet delight. Then, when I seemed to feel her soul stealing away, she spoke.

  “I want to reach that high place with all of you.” I bent my head to catch her words but that was all she said. The trail had narrowed again, and skirted the side of a precipice. A sapling grew sideways out of the mountain, and Bheema broke it off to let us pass. Further up, we heard the little bells of sheep. Three or four came towards us, while their shepherd called to them with grunts and cries. Dharma drove them backwards as though trained to it. The shepherd pointed us towards his shelter, making signs that we would be given food and shelter there, and then made room for us to pass before continuing with his flock down towards the meagre pasture.

  The hut was dark and smoky. Two children, bundled in rags, lay beside their elder sister. She and her mother gazed on Draupadi with awe. With worn hands the mother tended her, grinding leaves into a paste which she rubbed into Draupadi’s skin. We did not really believe that she would bring her back to us, this wrinkled woman of the mountains. I did not want to leave the side of Draupadi when she insisted that I follow her outside. But the old crone pulled at my hand. Draupadi was asleep, so I followed, though my mind remained chained to the hut. We must have walked half a yojana and I had decided to turn back when the woman bent over a clump of orange flowers; Leopard’s bane. They were all around. Digging into the ground with a stick and her bare hands, she got a plant out, root and all. Shaking it by the hairy stem she freed the roots of soil. Its aroma came to my nostrils. Once, during my climb to fetch the weapons when I had become exhausted, a pilgrim had restored me with this flower. Its effect was like the touch of a god
. Without thinking, I plucked one of the flowers with a little stem and chewed it. Instantly, in a truti, my breath came easier. The pressure in my head, which I was barely getting used to, cleared. The mountains around me gleamed brighter, the flowers stood out more brightly. I could not wait to bring this boon to Draupadi.

  But the woman knew what she was doing and took her time. She rolled it on her stone, roots and all. I could not hurry her though Draupadi’s cheeks had grown grey, as though smeared with ashes. At last, the woman had done her grinding and stirred a little mountain honey into the mess. I nearly snatched it from her, but next she put it into a child’s tiny beaker with some sheep’s milk. The smell was so nauseating, I feared that if there was still life in Draupadi she would spit it out. With tenderness, the woman cradled Draupadi’s head in the crook of her arm and guided some drops into her mouth, but the concoction dribbled right out. The teeth were clenched. She signed to me to open them. Though certain that her soul had begun its journey, I pried the jaws apart. The drops moistened her tongue. It seemed a long time before she swallowed. But almost immediately, the ashy veil of death began to lift and her eyes flickered. Bheema and Sahadeva wept, and Eldest sat as still as a mountain. Nakula came and touched the woman’s feet. Draupadi opened her eyes, looked up at the woman who had revived her, and caressed her cheek. Draupadi was like a flame of love. She smiled wonderingly and pushed herself up.

  Her voice was slow but steady. She gazed at her surroundings. “Pushan of the Pathways came. He is not at all the way they say, mounted on a goat. He is the sun but much greater than the sun with a pure white light.” Her own face was alight. We tried to hush her. She had been so near the other shore. She paused and a few more drops were fed to her. “He asked me if I wanted to go with him or to the mountain.” After a while with closed eyes she began to chant softly.

  That which is sound is not, nor touch, nor shape,

  Nor diminution, nor taste, nor smell,

  That which is eternal, and

  It is without end or beginning,

  Higher than the Great-Self, the stable;

  That having seen, from the mouth of death there is deliverance.

  “Pushan is very great,” she said. “He must have known that we have to reach that mountain, and he sent me back.” Soon we were sitting to a meal of bread and goat curd and some leafy vegetable. Draupadi looked vibrant and we began to joke about the orange flower. How would we ever drop our bodies? Our pilgrimage would last forever. The woman had gone to pick a quantity for us and laid it in the brilliant sun to dry. Then without warning, it began to drizzle, as it does in the mountains so often. She spread the flowers by her fire. The hut was full of simple love, the grandchildren hanging over her and the older daughter smiling shyly and combing Draupadi’s hair, though her own was one great tangle. We saw again how hard life was in palaces. The discomfort was in jewels and snowy beds.

  We were on our way again, bowing respectfully to the woman. With our pouches full of bread, dried curds and leopard’s bane; we bowed to the mountains, we bowed to the sun. We did pradakshina to the hut.

  Immediately we moved into something new. The spirit of the mountain began to speak to us. It was the voice of the Immutable. It was Prajapati. The mountains were no longer sentries to be conquered, but friends that offered healing flowers. They were no longer mounds of rock and ice. They were life and song. Our minds began to soar and glide like kites.

  That evening we watched the sun burnish the mountains. There was one that burned in the darkening sky, like a sword fresh from a forging.

  Then we sat while Bheema kindled fire from the wood that he had gathered.

  Although the leopard’s bane was a great help, climbing was hard. Daily we measured our strength against the height of the mountain and it was sweet to rest at night, as after days at the Yuddhashala, only now we were not straining muscles and training eyes in preparation for some battle. Peaceful nights and peaceful awakenings were ours.

  After leaving the hut we had descended to cross the bridge at the bottom of the valley and pick up the trail again. Now we rested by the river, listening to the music of the cascade which fed its flow. I could tell by the set of everybody’s head it spoke to each of us. Dharma’s ears were pricked up and though they say that dogs cannot smile, from time to time he turned to look at one or other of us with unmistakable delight.

  After the next ascent we came down into a valley that lay between great walls of rock, one of which hung over us while the other was so high and straight, that no sun could penetrate the valley’s gloom. We were glad to get back into the open when the gorge widened. Light. What do we really know of it? Draupadi had spoken of Pushan’s light. I have heard wounded soldiers say that when they left their bodies they were absorbed into a great brilliant light, only to be returned to life like little fishes thrown back to grow bigger. Here there was no lack of light; the soft morning light glinting on the snow of high peaks and becoming more and more intense as the sun rose higher and shone on slopes of golden namacharis that bobbed in the sweet breeze, bringing us the perfume from pine forests and wild flowers. The sense that we were aiming for that high white mountain began to slip away from us. We simply put one foot before the other. When I looked at Draupadi, it seemed to me that she must have worn the same expression as a child in Kampala before she understood what King Drupada drummed into her about the purpose of her incarnation. More and more, that world of madness and revenge seemed some invention, just another tale that someone had made up for the mimes and puppet masters to carry from town to town. It seemed to me that if I had brought Satyaki and all the youths who came to me in the Indraprastha military school to these mountains, they might have pitted their energies against the slopes instead of against each other. They were the children of Prajapati; they and their sons could have lived in harmony with Him. One day…one day. It was the promise I had heard in the desert while coming back with the Sacrificial Horse. It was Krishna’s promise to me. Now I heard it clearly.

  Once, when we had climbed a slope and stood upon a ridge, aching but triumphant, gazing back down into the valley and glorying in the fragrant zephyr, I saw a chunk of snow and ice the size of a bed slide gently downwards. The sun was melting the steep slope that we had come up. There was a rumbling and a tearing, and as we watched a portion bigger than a palace began to move and detach itself and then go hurtling down. The sound of thunder filled our ears. We felt the reverberations of this crash through our feet. At last, as the noise was dying down, Bheema started laughing. We all laughed. For the first time, we didn’t care. That haunch of mountain might have come away while we were on it; we were all ready. Perhaps it was a warning, or a promise, that we had not so much longer to go.

  At times, without warning, the clear sky would darken and the breeze would turn into a strong gale. Sometimes it drizzled while at other times, sweeping rain would pelt down and drive us to take shelter under a crevice. Sometimes it was the sun that drove us to our knees and we had to rest and wash our faces in fresh snow. On and on we pushed, almost without a goal. Just when we thought exhaustion would not let us move again, Lord Surya would smile kindly and we would chew Leopard’s bane and watch the clouds shine in the late sun with a beauty that must be a foretaste of the soul’s domain. Drinking water from a mountain stream one day, Nakula, his wet face upturned in ecstasy, exclaimed, “I hope the water on the other side tastes half as good as this.”

  “If not, you can always complain,” Bheema said.

  “What I shall miss are the clouds,” said Nakula.

  “I hope there are mountains. There should be something we can climb,” Bheema mused. He did not understand why we laughed. “And you, Eldest?” he asked. We waited. Eldest said very quietly, “I shall miss Dharma.” His hand rested on Dharma’s back. Did he really mean this dog, or was he pining for a life embedded in the Shastras.

  “What do the stars and Shastras say, Sahadeva?” Nakula asked.

  “Shastras are for Pundits in
the plains,” said Eldest. We all gazed at him. Bheema looked from one to another. Eldest was smiling. “Dharma is above the Shastras.” We twitched our eyebrows at each other at his remark.

  “Now I understand,” said Bheema. “The Shastras went down with that landslide.” We had not laughed with such innocence since Dronacharya’s school. When we paused Draupadi said,

  “I think that old Mother must have mixed some Soma wine into the leopard’s bane.” It set us off into peals of laughter.

  Something happened after that laughter. Childhood memories came back, of days spent in the forest before Hastina. We played again the pebble game as Vajra had done, the guessing game, the throwing-catching game, and the panchasamanvaya. Eldest after the first few times of watching joined us. He said, “There are no rites that can take you to the goal of equality.” His words fell into a silence and deepened it. We held our breaths, afraid he should say more.

  But he was silent.

  We had wanted to reach our great snow mountain before snow obliterated the trail, which was often faint enough, but now even that need failed. Our world was without aims. We slept and woke and washed in streams, and worshipped Maker of Day. We ate. We climbed. We went down again, and climbed again. It was the rhythm of eternity. I sometimes wondered if we had not already passed to the other side.

  37

  We are like beggars, we are like wanderers, and we are part of the mountain like rocks or plants or trees, only we walk instead of being rooted. We are nowhere and are going nowhere. When I feel this most strongly I look around and see that Draupadi or Sahadeva is with me. Sometimes in silence we all echo these sentiments together. In a way we have already reached our destination.

  In the valley, before the trail heads up again there are peasants who give us round discs of bread, some stew and berries. We can smell the forests once again, an aromatic smell that makes the nostrils tingle after the high, thin air. There are many birds, little red-bellied ones that shiver their tails inexhaustibly as they give a high call, and the blue-throated ones that we call the Shiva bird, that whistles softly. The flowers are riotous. Who could have invented them all, and the mountain peaks too…who? How? The answer is a smile.