The Rise of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  ‘What a filthy mouth you have, Agnayi. I am going to put in a word about you with my father. It is time we found a nice boy for you.’

  Agnayi disengaged her hands from Pritha’s and led her to the mirror. She placed her hands on her shoulders, and Pritha covered them with her own. A little pang came to Pritha’s heart as they both stared at their reflection. Agnayi’s nose was straight and thin, as though some lovelorn sculptor on Kunti’s streets had painstakingly created it. And her lips had such divine form. Pritha wondered if she could just reach out and touch them with the tip of her thumb.

  ‘When such beauty is in front of me every day,’ whispered Agnayi in her ear, ‘how shall I ever give my heart to a boy?’

  ‘You and I cannot make children, Agnayi,’ said Pritha. ‘I do hope you remember that.’

  ‘Ah, children, for whose sake do we have children, Princess? Only for ten years or so they are ours, then we become theirs.’

  ‘Says the girl who finds a different man to share her bed every night.’

  ‘Princess!’ Agnayi leaned around and looked straight into Pritha’s eyes, her face contorted into an expression of shock. Then she said, ‘Well, you cannot blame me. Some of the new stable-boys know their way around a bed.’ She touched their foreheads together. ‘I could ask them over one of these nights, if you would like to see for yourself.’

  ‘Again, again, that filthy mouth of yours,’ said Pritha.

  ‘Not the filthiest part of me, Princess,’ said Agnayi, leaning in, and then threw her head back in laughter. ‘I have missed you so, Princess. I am just glad that you are back.’

  They walked to the bed, hand in hand, and sat on it. For a few minutes neither of them spoke. But their eyes kept meeting and looking away, as though something sprang up in their minds but left before they could reach out and grasp it. Their hands too fidgeted about each other, uncertain. At last Pritha said, ‘What do you know about Durvasa?’

  ‘The sage?’ On Pritha’s nod, she said, ‘Old, for one.’ She looked at her. ‘Too old for you, certainly.’

  ‘Oh, is that all you ever think of?’ said Pritha in irritation. ‘I need to make him agree to something.’

  ‘With due respect, my lady, it is the man that ought to persuade the woman.’

  ‘Not if it is the woman’s work and the man has nothing to gain from it.’

  Agnayi frowned. ‘Do you have something in mind, Your Majesty?’

  ‘I – well – I need to take the sage into confidence about something, and we need to go to Mathura together.’

  ‘Mathura? But you have only just returned.’

  ‘I shall tell you the complete story later, but now I must ask you – will the sage like me the way I look or do you think I need to – make changes?’

  Agnayi’s frown deepened. ‘I do not like this, Princess. If you want to have the sage, that can be arranged. Leave it to me. But this journey to Mathura that you speak of – that sounds dangerous.’

  ‘It is, my dear,’ said Pritha, ‘and that is why I must trust you to keep my secret.’ She took both Agnayi’s hands and kissed them. ‘I can trust you, can I not?’

  ‘Just promise me that you shall be careful, Princess.’

  ‘Of course, I will. I am so glad to have you in my life, Agnayi. I promise you I will bring you such great diamonds on my return.’

  ‘I shall be glad, Princess, if you return safely.’ Agnayi got up from the bed and went to the mirror again. She looked at Pritha and said, ‘Come here, and I will dress you up so that the sage cannot take his eyes off you. He will be potter’s clay in your hands.’

  Dressed in a blue gown with little gold spots (which Agnayi had burrowed out of her closet) and a white linen hood, Pritha stood in front of her father’s throne. She kept her head bent, but every second or so she lifted her gaze to see if she could spot the sage. Only two men accompanied her father; one was the court astrologer who kept throwing serious glances at her as he spoke – she knew him well.

  The other – well, he looked no more than a boy, this stranger, with a head shaved smooth but for a tail of black oiled hair that dangled over the back of his neck. Every time he turned to speak to the king it fell over his shoulder. In his hand was a golden coloured staff with a sapphire perched on the tip. His arms were lean but wiry, and his calves and thighs suggested he had walked long distances in his young life. The third time she stole a glance up at the visitor, she saw his face and thought of just one thing: light.

  For a deep yellow light seemed to glow upon the boy’s face at all times. Pritha knew not how the trick was achieved; she was reminded of mud dolls she had seen on the streets at the spring fair in which holes were carved on all four sides so that lamps could be lit in them and covered with little pieces of brown linen. The dolls glowed as though they were small rubies themselves, and when hung on doorways on moonless nights, looked very pretty indeed.

  The boy looked like one such doll, except in yellow.

  Pritha looked around the room to see if there was anyone else, and at the same time her nose perked up, alert. It was said the sages from the North had queer powers; was it possible, then, that Sage Durvasa was present in the room but was invisible? His vessel of sacred water stood at the foot of the young man, so he could not be far away. In the middle of his speech the man’s eyes rested on her, and he smiled and inclined his head in a bow. Pritha averted her eyes and looked down at the ground.

  ‘Come, Pritha,’ said her father, ‘pay your respects to Sage Durvasa.’

  Pritha stepped forward, looking up only enough to make certain that she would not trip on the stairs. When she looked up, she saw that the young boy had stood up now, staff in hand, and was holding his right hand up, palm facing toward her in a sign of blessing. So Agnayi had been wrong, thought Pritha, as she went down on both her knees at his feet. She placed her hands on his toes and touched her forehead to them.

  ‘You shall have sons full of valour,’ said he, in a voice that had just begun to go hoarse. He would be no more than seventeen, she thought, and wondered what happened to the old hobbling sage that she had been told to expect. ‘Your daughter is as beautiful as a nymph on the Meru, Your Highness,’ said the sage. ‘You must scour North Country for a man eligible enough to have her.’

  ‘By your grace, my lord,’ said Kuntibhoja, bowing.

  ‘They tell me that the Kuru princes of Hastinapur are coming of age, too. I did not stop there on my way, but there was a wedding on the night of the equinox last year in the royal house there, was there not?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said her father. ‘The elder son of Vichitraveerya got wedded to a princess from the rocky mountains to the west.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the sage, and with his hands guided Pritha back to her feet. ‘Bhishma has his eyes set on the west. But an alliance with Kunti will do them good, I think. An alliance with Kuru is good for Kunti too.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  Sage Durvasa caressed the jagged surface of the sapphire. He had strong hands, Pritha noticed; long wiry fingers, square stubs for fingernails. With a smile, he said, ‘And it will not have escaped your notice, Your Majesty, that the king of Hastinapur, Pandu, is yet to be married. Only the blind elder brother got married, so if the eligible king finds young Pritha suitable, she may well become the High Queen of the land, and in time, queen mother.’ His smile hid a hint of a child’s mischief, and Pritha suddenly noticed how smooth his chin and scalp were, as though he had scraped them both with a knife just that morning.

  ‘But as you know, my lord,’ said her father, ‘Bhishma only looks northward.It almost seems to me that he wishes to swell his kingdom right up to the foothills of the Ice Mountains.’

  Durvasa nodded. ‘Indeed. But there is enough on this side of North Country to keep his hands full, if only he knows which fights to pick and which to leave alone. It has come to my ears that King Vasudev is being held prisoner at Mathura. Is that so?’

  Pritha’s eyes narrowed at the young visito
r. People said that sages had a divine eye that could see all of North Country. Some said they reared carrier pigeons. Whatever their sources of information were, she thought, they were reliable – and fast. Why, beyond Shurasena and Kunti, no other kingdom could possibly have known of this. And yet, a solitary sage on a long journey down from the northern mountains had got wind of it.

  ‘If Hastinapur’s help could be enlisted to fight Mathura,’ the sage was saying, ‘then it would afford you a chance to introduce beautiful Pritha here to young Pandu. Word is that he wishes to set out on a campaign throughout North Country. I dare say they plan to leave Mathura alone for now, unless you intervene.’

  Pritha wished he would not discuss her marriage with such equanimity. The two times their eyes had met and they had traded smiles, she had seen something impish in him, as if challenging her, and she found herself wishing to respond. But then she chided herself; this was but the first time they had met, and he was a sage with wisdom culled from all the ages, though he looked no older than a boy of seventeen. If he smiled at her, it could not have been out of lust or attraction; he must have seen thousands of maidens like her during his life.

  ‘We shall speak of that in due course, my lord,’ said Kuntibhoja. ‘You have come from a long way off. Pray retire to our visiting chambers and allow our women to wait upon you.’

  Durvasa turned to Pritha and said, ‘May I have the honour of being waited upon by this young lady?’

  Pritha felt heat rising to her cheeks, and she looked away. For a long time her father did not reply, and she was too scared to look at him to guess what he was thinking. But finally he said, ‘Yes, my lord, whatever you wish.’

  FIVE

  PRITHA SPEAKS

  I do not remember much about the day on which I first met Sage Durvasa, much like I do not remember the first time I must have gazed upon the face of my mother. But I remember certain flashes – of sight, smell and sound. As I think back now, I see a flash of brown, almost orange fabric that the sage wore. My nose seems to know the faint, sweet taint of wet sandal paste, and my ears still prick up at the gruff voice of a grown drunkard on the face of an innocent babe.

  It is difficult for an old woman such as I to narrate what a young sixteen-year-old girl would feel when a man of beauty smiles upon her, and sees her not as a child but as a woman. That girl was once me, but my body has now outgrown my mind. I have a faint memory of wishing to curl up into a ball that day, when Durvasa and I first smiled at each other, but I cannot now recall the shivers that must have travelled down my back, the chills that must have come over my fingers, the cold sweat that must have gathered under my arms.

  I do recall though the friendship that developed between him and me, and in time I began to see him not as a boy but a full, grown man. Now, in my failing age, I do not quite see his face as it once was. I only see the shape of a yellow mud doll with little windows carved on all sides holding a lamp within it and swinging from the roof, suspended by a thread of gold. It fills me with pleasure, that thread of gold, because it is the image of the only man that convinced me of love. Many after him have come, and they claim it was all his magic and that his love was all but fantasy, but there is still a girl inside me that believes that love cannot be made to spring into being through a puff and an incantation.

  That first week when Sage Durvasa came to Kunti I spent some time with him, usually after dusk when I went to serve him dinner. The waiting-women looked after him and his needs, and I heard ravenous whispers and giggles about the sage among the maids that attended to his chambers. During that week I went to the riverbed every day in my chariot – and my father would insist I have two riding attendants with me at all times – so that I could be carefree and gaze upon the open stillness of the Yamuna. After the sun was up you could see nothing but calm water, and in the distance one could see the cloudy mass of grassy knolls that led into the kingdom of Mathura. Yet I knew that if I were to tether a boat and ferry toward that shore, battle barges would converge upon me like bees on a spring rose.

  So I instructed my charioteer to drive along the bank until I reached the outer walls of Mathura, where the river was again unguarded. Here the river narrowed to almost half her width, and the water gushed along at twice the speed. On the other side I saw a line of donkeys tottering toward the city gates, and when their keepers cracked their whips upon their backs, they brayed meekly.

  ‘To whom do those donkeys belong?’ I asked my charioteer, and he said that they came hither from Magadha, the Great Kingdom to the east that was said to have ambitions of conquering the whole of North Country.

  That night, when I entered Sage Durvasa’s chambers with curried corn and rice on my plate, he said to the girl at the entrance, ‘Shut the door, will you, my girl?’ Then he watched me place his meal on the table by his side, and I – well, that last week we had played enough games with our stealing glances – looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Would you like me to fan you while you eat, sire?’

  ‘You shall not call me “sire”,’ he said, motioning me to his bed. ‘We have not had the opportunity to talk, have we, my lady Pritha?’

  ‘No, my lord,’ I said, and sat at the edge farthest from him. ‘But I trust the waiting-women have given you no reason to crave my company.’

  ‘They teach you to speak well in Kunti, I see,’ he said. ‘Come closer to me, my dear, and let me gaze into your lovely eyes. Let me hold your hand, for it is cold this night in your kingdom, and I would very much like to warm myself by your touch.’

  ‘I think it is hunger that is keeping you cold, sire,’ said I. ‘Perhaps I should leave and let you eat.’

  ‘I am hungry, yes, but not for the food that you brought.’

  In spite of myself I went pink at that, and I dared not look up to see the desire in his eyes, for then I would have melted and given him what he wanted. The only weapon a woman held over a man was the use of her body; put a small price over it and he will chew you up like a betel leaf and spit you out, crushed and crumpled.

  So I said, ‘My lord, I am but a girl who does not know the ways of men. Must you send flutters down my heart this way? Can you not sate your urges with our attendants?’

  He smiled, his thin lips spreading and his eyes twinkling. ‘I think you know enough about the ways of men, my lady. And as for your attendants, I sate their urges more than they sate mine, I dare say.’

  When he said that, I remembered the cupped hands and whispers among the chamber girls. Envy surged through me. I moved a little closer to him, but he extended his arm, gripped my wrist, and pulled me toward him. I started to give out a little cry of surprise, but his lips locked with mine and drove it back down my throat. My eyes widened first, then a dull fog filled my head and I fell into a trance, allowing him to suckle gently on my bottom lip. When he moved away I noticed that my fists were closed tight around his upper garment, and with a chuckle, he moved in again, this time for longer; a lot longer.

  When we broke apart this time, he rubbed his mouth with the side of his forefinger. ‘You learn quickly, Princess,’ he said. ‘Not like the waiting-women.’

  I flushed, and moved away again to gather myself. It was not easy to carry out your plans, no matter how elaborate and well-thought-out, when a man made you tingle in your knees like he did. I was scared that he would follow me to my edge of the bed, but thankfully he did not, for if he had, I would have either given in to his embraces or run out of the room, both of which would have been regrettable.

  After my breathing returned to normal, I told him, ‘I wish to go to Mathura to rescue my brother and his wife.’

  His smile did not change, but his gaze became more interested, I thought. He took a piece of corn and put it into his mouth.

  ‘My father and foster-father are both cowardly,’ I said, feeling the heat rise within me. ‘They do not do justice to the blood of their forefathers that flows in them. When a dacoit kidnaps their future king, they sit by and watch.They say Mathura is too
strong for them to take.’

  ‘It is true, my lady,’ said the sage. ‘Mathura is too strong for Shurasena and Kunti to fight on their own. Perhaps if the Kuru kings could be persuaded–’

  ‘I do not believe in looking outward for help. Why would Hastinapur come and help us lay siege to Mathura?’

  ‘For a prize such as you, my fair maiden,’ he said, ‘I would think any king in the land would lead his forces against any power.’

  ‘Sire, will you please listen to me?’ I said, trying to snap him out of his illusion.‘I was at the riverbank today, and I saw the Magadhan trade caravan entering Mathura through its eastern gates, and while the gate itself was guarded, the caravan was not.’

  Durvasa sat up on his bed. His hand reached for his staff, and he began to stroke the sapphire with his thumb. ‘Go on, Princess.’

  ‘Can we not enter Mathura that way, if we perhaps disguise ourselves as Magadhan tradesmen, and then can we not make our way to the king and rescue my kinsman and his wife?’

  ‘If it were as easy as that–’

  ‘I shall not venture to say it is simple, sire, which is why I am asking for your help,’ I said, ‘and I ask not for favours.’ I looked down at my feet. ‘You know more about the Great Kingdoms than I do, and I am certain that once we are inside the city, we shall find some way to get to the prison where they hold my brother.’ I held my hands together and squeezed my palms. ‘If you shall be so kind as to help me, I – I–’

  ‘It is dangerous, this mission you ask of me,’ said Durvasa. ‘I could lose my life.’

  I looked up at him, and with rare courage I met his eyes and said, ‘Did you not just say, sire, that a man would face any danger to have me?’

  I do not know where I got the courage to say such things to a man I had only met once, and perhaps I was no more than a lovelorn girl in pigtails. But there was something about the glow on Sage Durvasa’s face – its mystery would be revealed to me later, when it was too late – which seemed to feed my soul and spirit, and I could think of nothing else but to breach Mathura’s walls, break open the prison that held Devaki and Vasudev if need be, and bring them back to Shurasena.