‘He will one day rule the land, my lady,’ he had said. ‘His education must begin, therefore, at the earliest possible time – right from the womb.’
She had begun to tell him all that she knew of the world, but on the second or third day a thought had struck her. Why not also tell her son, she thought, of the reason for which he was being brought into the world? So she had begun to recount the tale of Amba, the princess of Kasi, the lover of Salva, the paramour of Vichitraveerya, the queen of Hastinapur, the mother to the son of Drupad, the High King of Panchala, the priestess of the Mother – and the enemy of Bhishma.
Every day for the last six months she had repeated the story to him, and now it all came out in a great torrent, like the Yamuna in flood. As she whispered, she held her palms on her stomach, rubbing them in circles on both sides. It was as though she were reading off an invisible parchment placed under her closed eyelids. Her first telling of the story had been neutral, sometimes even from Bhishma’s point of view (as she understood it), but lately she had begun to stress her own feelings, her own thoughts, her own emotions. More often than anything she repeated how important it was for him – her son – to avenge all the wrongs that had been heaped on her by one man.
She stopped when the back of her neck began to ache and let her body slide down against the wall so that she could lay on her back and sleep. But her stomach stirred again, and her eyes shot open. She felt as though her son had slipped off her and was falling to the ground.
She sat up in a flash, legs spread out, and waited, reminding herself to breathe. For a few seconds nothing happened, and she thought she could go back to sleep again. But then it came again, a swift sliding motion deep inside her, as though something had snapped. She tried turning over on her side, but abandoned the idea at the sharp pain that shot up her back when she moved. She leaned back, supporting herself on her elbows, and gulped.
This was it. The moment had arrived.
‘Anjasi!’ she called out.
The boy was coming. Her pupils dilated, and wrench after wrench took hold of her to shake her by her innards. ‘Anjasi!’ She fell to the ground and began to whine as waves of pain washed over her. She dug her fingers into the dry earth, and as her stomach cramped up further, her eye lids grew heavy, and though she fought with herself to stay awake for the sake of the boy, her mind had given way, and she felt her body shutting down. With one last gasp of effort, she called out, in a voice that was no more than a hoarse whisper: ‘Anjasi!’
Then she passed out.
When she next woke up, it was dark outside. She reached out with her hand and met Parushni’s. She asked, ‘How is my son?’
‘You had a daughter, my lady. She is as beautiful as you are.’
Amba frowned, and struggled to prop herself up against the wall. ‘A daughter – how is that possible?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No, no. There must have been some mistake.’ She turned to Parushni, squeezed her hand. ‘Are you certain you are not mistaken, Parushni? Are you certain he is not a boy?’
Parushni shook her head gently. ‘I think you ought to sleep for a while longer, my lady.’
‘I do not!’ Amba jerked her hand away. In her mind she ran over the words that had come to her that faraway morning by the plants. Had the Goddess not told her that she would bear a son who would kill Bhishma? She closed her eyes and racked her brain in frantic desperation. Was there something that she was missing? She had done the Goddess’s bidding word for word, the Goddess had promised her revenge through her son, and now … and now…
She closed her ears and let out a long, shrill cry.
Parushni drew back, horrified. ‘My lady,’ she said, ‘you are still weak, and you know not what you are doing. Please rest your eyes for a bit. Sage Parashurama will bring your child to you in due course.’
‘I do not want to see my daughter!’ cried Amba. ‘I did not want a daughter, do you not understand? How brazenly has the Goddess betrayed me!How I trusted the Goddess, became one with her for eight years – eight years! And this is how she repays my trust. She promises me a son and gives me a daughter.’ Her fingers knotted together and twisted. The toes of her feet curled and uncurled.
‘My lady,’ said Parushni, taking into her hands an earthen vessel, ‘you must drink this. You must sleep.’
With a cry of anger Amba knocked it off, sending it crashing against the wall. The green slime that had filled it now lay on the floor, and it seemed to Amba that it made the shape of a slender man with a beard. She sprang to her feet and threw herself at the liquid, clawing at it with her fingers and digging her nails into the earth.
‘Amba,’ said a voice.
She stopped, hunched on her knees, her garment now soiled with smudges of green. She looked up at the door, and saw the dark figure of the High Sage. Breathing heavily, Amba rolled into a sitting position with one knee raised. She rested her chin on it, slid her hands into her hair, and began to sob.
‘Amba.’
‘Do not come near me,’ she said, her voice steady. ‘You – you are all the same! You come in different garbs, all of you; my father, Salva, Bhishma, Drupad, Jarutha, Parashurama – all of you are the same fiend that go by different names. You take me out by the hand, promise me something, and then you drop me in the middle of the river and ask me to swim.’ She pulled at her hair with both hands and gave out a cry of anguish. ‘Why, High Sage! I was happy being in my own world as a priestess. Why did you have to come and ask me to lay with Drupad?’
‘I did not ask you to have a child with him, my lady,’ said Parashurama, standing at a distance. He signalled to Parushni to leave. After she bowed to both of them and retreated, Parashurama’s voice softened. ‘But what has happened has happened, Amba. Do not question the will of the Goddess.’
‘I did not, High Sage, not until today. Because that is all I have done in the last nine years of my life: always sought the Goddess’s command. But even the Goddess is like unto you, my lord; or perhaps you all are like her, I do not know. She promised me a son, and she gave me a daughter. What am I to do with a daughter, High Sage, pray tell.’
‘Do you forget, Amba, that you yourself are a daughter to your father? Do you not know that for a priestess, a daughter is more desirable since she can train her to be priestess after her?’ He took a step closer to her. ‘Perhaps that is the Goddess’s will.’
‘The Goddess’s will is to rile me,’ said Amba savagely. ‘The Goddess’s will is to show me how powerful she is. She is nothing more than a petty crone who wishes women to serve her blindly, taking her every action in their stride.’ She looked away in the direction of the door, and she thought she saw a spot of purple flash by. Looking back at Parashurama she said, ‘I no longer serve the Goddess, High Sage. She has forsaken me, and so I shall forsake her.’
‘She has not forsaken you,’ said Parashurama. ‘And you cannot forsake her. None of us can.’
‘I can!’ said Amba, her eyes burning bright with fury. ‘And I will. From today the Goddess is as good as dead to me.’
Parashurama raised a warning hand, and took a faltering step toward her. ‘It does not become a priestess–’
‘I am not a priestess!’ said Amba, sitting up. ‘Do not come near me, High Sage, and do not woo me with your false words and smiles. I have taken enough betrayal for one life, and I cannot bear to take any more. I beg of you.’
For a moment the sage said nothing. He then took a couple of steps back into the shadow, and Amba saw his figure set against the silvery starlight. ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘I shall not be with you if you do not want me. But you must sleep, my child.’
Amba did not answer.
‘You must sleep,’ said Parashurama again, ‘for it is late at night, and you have been through much in the last two days. Perhaps early tomorrow morning you can see your daughter–’
‘I do not wish to see my daughter,’ said Amba.
The sage sighed. ‘So be it.’ He turned and left the hut.
&nbs
p; After he left, once again Amba thought she saw a flash of purple at the door, and with half a mind she wondered if she should go up to the courtyard and look for the fawn that had once taken her to the riverbank. But to what end? The Goddess would lead her again, somewhere, and then she would promise her one thing and give her quite another. She crawled on all fours to the corner of the hut furthest from the lamp, and curled up into a ball, wrapping her arms around her knees. In the darkness she saw a distinct shadow of a warrior raising his bow, ready to shoot an arrow at his enemy. She could not see his face, but if she could, she knew he would be bearded, and if she could hear him speak, she knew his voice would be a soft, clear, dulcet whisper.
She wept.
The next time Amba opened her eyes, for the first few seconds she did not see anything. In the daze she wondered wildly if she had gone blind with anger at the Goddess, but soon, dark shapes began to form in her line of vision. She turned her head to look at the front door of her hut; the leaves of the guava tree beside her well rustled in the night breeze, and the starlight had become sharper. Amba sat up against the wall and shut her eyes, recalling what she had seen in her sleep. It came back to her in short, white flashes.
It was the same vision she had seen earlier, that morning when Parashurama had come to her asking if she would sleep with Drupad. She had seen the same black-tipped arrow with the golden feathers set to the ivory bow by dark brown, slender hands. A wisp of raven-black hair would appear every now and then at the corner of her sight, and it would wave for a moment before disappearing. The naked arms, shorn of all jewellery, lifted the bow into the air and released the arrow with a twang.
The shaft zipped past the heavy grey air, and Amba saw a long streak of lightening in the background among the rainclouds as the arrow zoomed in on its target. It shattered the bearded warrior’s armour and pierced his chest, and as a horrible cry of death escaped him, Amba felt joy surge within her. The man looked nothing like Bhishma – his hair was greyer and thinner, his skin was loose and had folds – but she thought it had to be him. No other man’s death would cause her this much joy.
But it was the sight of the archer that caused her to draw back in surprise. On that morning when she had first seen this, the arrow had risen on its own, and the bow’s string had been pulled back by invisible arms. Today she had seen who shot the arrow that killed the champion of Hastinapur; it was not a man, no, it was a maiden who was much older than her but looked very much like her.
She opened her eyes, and the purple-coated fawn stood at the door, blinking at her with one foot inside her hut. When she stared at him, he blinked two more times and jumped out into the courtyard. He strutted ahead a couple of paces, then looked back at her over his shoulder, as though beckoning her.
Amba got up to her feet and followed the fawn, and as he had done all those years ago, he led her to the riverbank, and as Amba sat down at the same spot by the growing grass shoots, he cavorted to her side and rested his chin over her thigh. She placed her palm over his forehead and combed him, watching his eyes grow dreamy and dull. All around her the water seemed to sparkle in brilliant white beads and waves; in the flowing river, on the tips of blades of grass, on the fawn’s fur. How beautiful everything is, she thought, and looking up, she said in a whisper: You have not forsaken me, have you, Mother?
For now she knew that the arrow that would kill Bhishma would be shot by a woman, and who said women could not be warriors? Perhaps they could not prevail against men with weapons of the hand, but archery required no great strength; and now she remembered the lessons of an obscure sage who had come by Kasi when she was eight and had told her tales of an island far away peopled by women who fought with the best warriors of their age. She had first assumed that the woman whom she had seen in her dream was herself after she had aged a few years, but now she was sure; it was not her. She had Drupad’s wide forehead, and she had his thin brow, his black lips.
Whether she had a son or a daughter did not matter, Amba thought; not all men were heroic, nor were all women docile and meek. Everyone came into the world the same way, she had learned during her training as a priestess; the Goddess did not discriminate while giving life. Anybody could become anything, so long as they had teachers to teach them and mentors to guide them. Her daughter would have the best of teachers in herself and in High Sage Parashurama. She would learn the art of war from the same man who once taught Bhishma, and she would learn the ways of a priestess from her. She would grow up drinking from her breast, so she could not fail to imbibe the wrongs that had been done to her. She would grow up wishing to avenge the world for what it had done to her mother.
Amba would make sure of it.
She got up to her feet, only noticing in passing that the shimmer on the rivers had disappeared and the fawn had woken up and gambolled away. The night had become darker and more ominous, but she felt as though the Goddess had lit her from within. She ran all the way back to the hermitage and to Parushni’s hut. She entered it with a smile on her face, and rushed to Parushni’s side, where a little bundle of cotton garments lay. She knelt by its side and pushed the clothes aside so that she could see her daughter.
Her hand trembled.
The babe did not open her eyes, but when Amba placed her finger on the little one’s palm, the fingers curled around it. She picked her up gingerly in both her arms and carried her out. The breeze had died down now, and the trees appeared still, as though they had stepped into a painting. She touched her lips to the babe’s pale cheek and smoothened her brow. She recognized the lips; they belonged to the woman in her dream. Amba looked up at the stars and said, ‘No, Mother, you have not forsaken me.’
With half a mind she expected the fawn to come at her from behind the well and jump around them, but nothing happened. Amba clutched the infant to her bosom and whispered: ‘I shall call you Shikhandini.’
BOOK TWO
THE BLACK STONE
PROLOGUE
GANGA SPEAKS
The hardest lesson a priestess learns is that of ignoring the voice inside her. My mother, Ganga, the Lady of the River that flowed along the slopes of the holy mountain Meru before the gates came quietly sliding down, told me this on the day I was about to leave for Earth for the first time. You shall hear voices inside you, Jahnavi, she said, but do not deceive yourself into thinking that they belong to the Goddess. Priestess or not, the Goddess does not speak in mortal tongues.
This lesson has fallen on deaf ears up on the Meru too, for I see Brihaspati and Vasishta and all the other wise men claim that they know the will of the Goddess, that she has spoken to them. Common men do not share this folly; they well know that the Goddess is beyond reach, and they see the voices inside their minds for what they are: their own selfish desires. But the wise men and the priestesses believe – just because they have undergone such hardships in their training – that they have somehow come closer to the Goddess, and they insist on others the belief that the Goddess whispers to them alone, and they alone can hear her.
Amba did not have a true priestess guiding her through her trials, and though Sage Parashurama guided her as well as he could, it was perhaps no wonder that she erred. She heard what she wished to hear, she saw in her surroundings what she wished to see, and instead of extinguishing the fire of hatred that burnt her heart, she chose to kindle it, telling herself all the while that the Goddess willed it so. During the five years of her time at Parashurama’s hermitage, though, she was truly on the road to being a priestess, and if Parashurama had not come to her with the request to cleanse the High King of Panchala, perhaps she would have found that little clear spot within her – that spot within all men where the Goddess resides.
But perhaps I am being too harsh on her; after all, Shikhandini would go on to become the woman to cause me the greatest loss that I have ever known, and perhaps that goads me to have feelings of resentment toward her mother. This is the nature of all tales, then; it is impossible to remove the teller from the stor
y, though I strive to be neutral and force myself to see in all colours, through all eyes.
To this day the vision of Devavrata haunts me in my sleep, and I do not think I shall be free of it even in death. I do not see him as the old patriarch who fell to his death on the battlefield, pierced by a hundred arrows. I do not see him as the spineless man – some said selfless – who stepped aside again and again for the throne of Hastinapur to be occupied by men who had no fire in their loins. I do not see him as the gangly youth who stormed out of my hut on the Meru, vowing never to return.
No, I see him as he was when he was four, when he cried after me and held the tip of my garment in his closed fist to prevent me from going up the well to offer my prayers. I see him asleep on my lap after I had recited to him – for the hundredth time – the story of the Wise Ones and the pitcher-girl. I see light in his eyes, I see contentment in his heart. In all the years he lived on Earth, he had neither. That is as it should be; for there is no light or contentment in life on Earth. If he is to live among the mortal people, he must live as they do.
Sage Brihaspati’s words come to me, now and then, not in the same tone in which he uttered them, but softer, almost musical. ‘Earth will shred you to pieces, Son of Ganga,’ he had said. On that day I had thought that the sage was cursing my son, but later, I understood that it was no more than a proclamation of truth. When the sage’s words came true, when the final arrows pierced into the chest of my son, I found myself strangely calm, neither surprised nor sorrowful. What had to come to pass had come to pass. But there was no denying the searing pain that shot through my breasts, as if that last arrow that felled him pierced my heart too.
On the day that Devavrata turned his back on the Meru, he turned into an enemy of the mountain, and when I became Lady of the River after the death of my mother, he became my enemy too. When he had to choose between me and Earth, he chose Earth; perhaps it is fair then, that when I had to choose between him and Meru, I chose the mountain, for it birthed and reared me. Devavrata fought with many a weapon during his time on Earth, but when he came to battle with me and the people of Meru, he found himself powerless, for our weapons were not swords and bows.
The Rise of Hastinapur Page 11