The Rise of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  Durvasa’s fist snapped shut once again. ‘But if you insist on seeing the royal seal which Uddalaka so regrettably forgot to carry with her, I think not that we shall come here again. There are enough Great Kingdoms on the other side of the Ganga who would give half their lands for a treasure such as this!’

  ‘But sir,’ said the guard, ‘we have orders not to let anyone in without either a brand or the king’s seal.’

  ‘We have the mark of Magadha on our arms, my man,’ said Durvasa, showing him his arm again. ‘I was born there, and I dare say I pledged my loyalty to King Jarasandha when I gave up my dear sister – my only sister – up for his court. Why, Uddalaka, have I not?’ Pritha nodded, and before she could speak, Durvasa said, ‘And what of Uddalaka herself, her prime of youth dedicated to the service of the king and his many needs. We worship the land of Magadha as much as you worship Mathura, and do we not all want the friendship of the two lands to last till the end of time?’

  ‘Yes,’ the guard agreed, ‘we do, yes.’

  Durvasa drew back, returned the gems into his bag, and sighed deeply. ‘Ah, but if you men do not let us pass without the seal, you shall only be doing your duties.’ Upon getting an eager nod from the guard, he patted him on the shoulder. ‘We shall turn back if that is what you wish, but keep in mind, my man, that this may enrage King Jarasandha, and you may get a messenger from him soon, and he shall bear the seal; oh, he shall.’ Durvasa took Pritha’s hand in his and turned his back on the bemused guard. ‘Come, Uddalaka,’ he said, ‘let us go back and tell High King Jarasandha that his loyal servants are no longer welcome in Mathura. It will sadden him, yes, but that is the truth.’ They took a few steps away from the gate, and the group of traders in front of them stepped aside to allow them to pass.

  ‘Wait,’ said the guard, after they had descended the stairs. ‘Do not leave, trader.’

  Durvasa stopped, but did not turn back.

  ‘Perhaps you are who you say you are,’ said the guard.

  Durvasa threw him a scornful look over his shoulder. ‘Perhaps? If you so doubt me, guard, let me go and you shall have your answer – perhaps – in a few days from the High King himself. Can the town of Mathura afford to foster enmity with a kingdom as mighty as Magadha? Ask yourself that, guard, and you shall have your answer. Perhaps!’

  The guard’s partner, a frail man with greying hair, who had hitherto stood watching, now sprang into action. Angrily waving the younger man into silence, he pottered down the steps and stood by Durvasa, bowing with his hands joined. ‘Fie! Fie on him for having spoken to our esteemed guests that way. I beg your forgiveness for both of us, sire. Please pass, and please take with us good tidings for Kamsa, the lord of Mathura.’

  Durvasa looked at him with fury in his face for a long moment. Then he relented and said, ‘I do not wish to raise hell when you men are just doing your jobs. But I do wish you learn to tell real noblemen from tricksters.’

  ‘He … he is new, my lord, and he is quite young. Please forgive him, and please come, my lord. Please, my lady, please come.’ The man clambered back up the stairs, bowing to them after each step, and he nearly stumbled and fell once or twice. Back at the entrance, under the arch, Durvasa laid a hand on the young guard’s shoulder and nodded.

  ‘I am pleased by your spirit,’ he said. ‘If all kingdoms had guards like you, no spies will escape alive. But not all of us are spies, my man.’

  The young guard murmured: ‘I beg your forgiveness, my lord.’ His face was wrought tight, Pritha noticed. If it were not for the glowering older man by his side who elbowed him in the hip, she doubted if the fellow would have bowed to them.

  Durvasa dove into his bag and brought out two stones, and holding them out to the old man, dropped them into his palm. ‘One for each of you,’ he said. ‘Let it not be said that the subjects of Jarasandha have not inherited his generosity.’ At this, both the guards smiled, and after slipping the gems into their pockets, they signalled to the gatekeeper to let them pass.

  EIGHT

  Pritha wore her veil as they entered the streets of Mathura. It was long after sunset, so the lamps in front of the huts on either side of the road had retreated within themselves. Here and there, people sat on rocking wicker chairs on their front porch, sipping buttermilk from their brass vessels, stopping their conversation to stare at them as they passed. Pritha held her veil in one hand and kept her head bowed. Through the light yellow fabric the lamps appeared to be nothing more than smudges, but she could clearly see curiosity on people’s faces. Here was a city that did not like visitors, she thought, twisting her nose against the smell of cattle dung that hung in the air.

  They passed the streets and made their way toward the river, where the farmhouses lay. Durvasa walked with a sure step, as though he had come here before. He did not stop to talk to anyone, but she noticed he wore on his face the smile of a priest, and the ash on his body gave him an exotic, sacred appearance. Whenever a bunch of rustic men would pass them, he would take her hand in his and pull her a little closer.

  Soon the path narrowed, and on both sides of her Pritha saw open fields. Only a few of them were flourishing, though, she noticed, and she remembered someone say to her long back that though Mathura was in between the two great rivers, the soil was muddy and wet, which meant large expanses of land were infertile. Even here she could see great patches of brown splotched across the green fields.

  Each field, though, had a shed for cows and a barn full of caged containers which housed hens. All along her walk Pritha had to keep her nose bent at an angle so that she could at least close one nostril against the foul smell. Cows called out to their young ones, bulls snorted, buffaloes brayed, and tiny white chickens hopped and skipped along the ground, pecking at the soil.

  Most of the houses she saw were made of brick and stone, and even here, out of the way of the main streets, every house appeared as though it had been just washed. In front of most houses she saw the picture of the golden discus that she had seen on top of the arch. Here the lamps appeared brighter; whether they really were or if they appeared so because there were no fires about (as they were on the streets), she did not know. The moon was perched at the sky’s zenith, and once in a while Durvasa raised his head to look at it, as though drawing strength from it.

  They stopped near a house erected on a mound on two levels. An iron fence stood around it in a circle, and Pritha saw that nails had been inserted into it so that the sharp points extended outward. Even here they had the fear of theft, then, she thought, and followed Durvasa up the path leading to the wooden gate. When they reached it, they heard a low, growling sound of a man from inside. ‘Turn back!’ he said. ‘I have a Magadhan spear in my hand, and by the gods I shall not hesitate to send it through your chest if you take one more step forward.’

  Durvasa raised his hands above his head and called out, ‘We are not intruders, sir. I’m just a weary trader from Magadha with my sister. We need a place to stay for the night.’

  There was silence, and Pritha could imagine the man with the spear on the other side of the grilled window, chewing ominously on betel leaves or some such, mulling it over. ‘Come closer to the light so that I can see you,’ he said. First Durvasa, then Pritha went to the right edge of the gate, under the fire. ‘Why is the lady under a veil?’

  ‘My sister has a beautiful face, kind sir, and young men now are not as chivalrous and kind as they were in your day.’

  ‘Do not get me started on the upstarts,’ said the man from inside. Pritha heard a lock click, and the door open. A man of about fifty with an unkempt beard and a falling stained turban came out, limping on one leg, carrying his spear over his shoulder like a mace. He came to the gate and stood a good three feet away from them, watching. His body bent one way to account for the bad leg, and he had a curious way of looking through one eye and cocking his eyebrow. ‘Just one day, you say? You shall find your own way tomorrow, or I shall set my bulls on you, I will.’

  Du
rvasa bowed. ‘Just for one day, sir.’

  With a groan of approval he set about undoing the latches on his gate, one after the other. While he did so he mumbled something about the spate of thefts that had been plaguing Mathura for the last few months, and how he had lost four cows. ‘It has become a nightmare, living in this town,’ he said, swinging open the gate and waving them in. Pritha waited at the front door, pulled back her veil over the back of her head, and waited. ‘Please go on, my lady,’ said the man from behind her, ‘you may find it a little too rustic for your taste, but I do have a lot of room, I do.’

  Pritha went in, and in the light of the two oil lamps that stood on the spinning wheel lodged in the middle of the room, stood to one corner and watched the men walk in. The farmer hobbled in behind Durvasa, locked the door, and said, ‘They call me Nabha. I used to have the most number of cows around these parts, but in the great disease of Ananda, I lost a few hundred heads. The priests came and gave us more of their black stones that year, so that we could till our lands better, but no, the soil here does not hold.’

  Durvasa motioned Pritha to a seat, and Nabha hurried across the room to hold the chair for her. She did not know why the garrulous man became so gentle in such a short time; but she bowed in his direction and took her seat. ‘Pray forgive me, my lady,’ said Nabha, taking off his turban and rolling the loose end around his wrist tightly. ‘I have not had a maiden in this house for a whole age. I know not how to behave with them, so you shall forgive me if I do not treat you as I ought to.’

  ‘You have given us your house, sir,’ said Pritha. ‘What more can we ask you to do?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Nabha. ‘Ah, oh, I … I have a tumbler of buffalo milk on the hearth. Will you two have some? That and jaggery; it will put you to sleep like babes, it will, and send you dreams that are white and sweet.’

  Durvasa smiled at him and nodded. Nabha went into the kitchen and brought out two brass glasses and a plate with two yellow pieces on it. Pritha looked out of the window, and in the silvery moonlight she saw an expanse of land sloping toward the Yamuna, with clutches of paddy fields growing in pockets all over it, punctuated with huge smudges of brown. ‘Is that all yours, sir?’ she asked, taking the glass of milk.

  ‘By the grace of the gods, yes,’ said Nabha. ‘And it is to the grace of the priests and our temples that we are able to coax crops out of such stubborn land. You are from Magadha, you said; you should know, then, what my words mean.’

  Pritha began to shake her head, but Durvasa said, ‘Yes, of course we do, kind sir.’

  ‘I … I must ask you to forgive me again, sir, for what I said when you were at the gate. It is a dark night, and my eyes do not see as well as they once did.’ When he bent over the table, and his face neared the lamp, Pritha saw that his left eye was covered with a grey, smoky substance. He saw her noticing, and blinked ashamedly before turning away. ‘I said you can only stay for a night, but I have a big house, my lady, my lord, and you can stay here as long as you wish.’

  ‘We shall not, Nabha,’ said Durvasa, finishing his glass of milk. ‘But we have come here late, and I trust we have shaken you out of your slumber. So now I think we best retire to our beds, and perhaps tomorrow you can guide us on how to reach King Kamsa’s palace.’

  The man’s one eye widened a touch, and he said in a whisper: ‘You know the High King, do you?’

  ‘Yes, we carry a few things that are of importance to the High King.’

  Pritha saw a faint wave of suspicion enter Nabha’s face, and his manner became more reserved. After they had emptied their glasses he carried the vessels to the kitchen, and on returning, he pointed to the staircase. ‘If you please, go up these steps and take one bed each. I shall sleep here on my rope cot.’ Turning to Pritha he said, ‘My lady, I shall not brag that these are beds a lady like you is used to sleeping on. I am but a cow-keeper, and this is all that I can give you.’

  Pritha got up and inclined her head at him. Durvasa’s words – that nobody could look at her and not guess that she was a princess – came back to her. Until she had the veil on her face, the man wanted to chase them off with a spear. The moment she had given him a look of her face, his manner of speaking had changed. If she had but raised her veil at the gate, Durvasa may not have had to resort to all that trickery.

  They went up the stairs, and when they reached the top, Durvasa looked down, waved and said, ‘Sleep well, Nabha.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord, I will.’

  Pritha woke up to the sound of a rooster. Gently she disengaged herself from Durvasa and sat up to tie her hair. The previous night, after they had taken their respective beds in the loft, the sage had come to her and lain his hand on her arm. She should have brushed it away and asked him to return to his bed, but she had looked at him and smiled. ‘It is a cold night, Pritha,’ he had said, ‘perhaps we can stay warm better if we shared a cot.’

  She picked up her anklets from the ground and tied them around her feet. She got up, walked to the window. Every time she allowed him to touch her, they went a bit further than they had the previous time. Last night he had lifted her lower garment up to her thighs, and his hands had stolen underneath her robe. It would not be long before he would take her, she thought, as she stood in the red light of dawn and looked at the rising sun. As the first rays hit her cheeks, she closed her eyes and felt that the warmth of the sage’s touch was somehow akin to the warmth of the sun.

  When she opened them again, she saw movement at the bottom of her vision. It was Nabha wheeling a contraption into his field. It looked like a small chariot, but no horse or bull was tied to it. The wheels dragged behind them a pole whose teeth – like the canines of a tiger – faced downward, toward the earth. On top of the wheels was a wooden chair with high armrests and a thick brown rope wound against its legs. On the other end the rope held together a long thin handle that pointed straight ahead, and it was this handle that Nabha was currently pulling at.

  The toothed pole dropped a touch and scraped against the ground. Nabha swore. He limped across to the water wheel and dragged across a black, rectangular stone. Halfway back to his plough, he stopped and mopped his brow, and after sitting down on his stone for a few minutes he resumed his journey. Pritha watched him with a mixture of amusement and wonder; when she had seen the field last night, she had thought it would take at least twenty strong men to till it, but here was Nabha, frail and sick and half blind, going at it gamely.

  Behind her Durvasa moaned. She looked over her shoulder to see if he was waking up. But he only rolled over and went back to silent breathing. When she turned around she saw that Nabha had succeeded in bringing the black stone to the plough, and he began to tether it to the back. She felt sorry for the old man; he had told her last night that it had been long since he had a maiden in the house, which meant that there was a time when he had family too, perhaps a wife, a son, a daughter…

  What misfortune would have occurred to leave him alone at this age, to grapple with tools that he could no longer use? From Durvasa’s sack she removed a neem twig, broke it in two, and carried the piece with her down the stairs, to the back of the hut where she presumed the water tumbler was kept. After cleaning her teeth, she splashed water over her face and arms. The skin under her upper arm smarted as water hit it, and she turned it over to examine it. She saw Durvasa’s teeth marks. She felt the base of her neck with her forefinger, and pulled it back when it felt rough and tender to the touch. She thought of her brother and his wife in Kamsa’s prison; while they languished in captivity, here she was, cavorting with a sage. Angry at herself, she hurled the water vessel back into the tumbler and walked out of the front door and onto the field.

  When she came to the doorway, the sight that met her eyes made her stop. ‘By the gods!’ she said, as her eyes widened and her step faltered. She shut her eyes once, shook her head, and then opened them again, certain that what she saw would disappear as an apparition would, but there it was, still. She fumbled ov
er to the edge of the field, not noticing the smell of dung in the morning air.

  Set against the sun, Nabha sat on the chair mounted on his plough, slumped, as though he had had his fill of arrack. With his hands he gripped the handle in front, and he seemed to push and pull at it. Behind the wheels the toothed pole dug into the earth. The wheels kept turning at a steady pace, and white smoke rose into the air from the black box. Pritha first thought that the plough had been set on fire, but the smoke rose only to disappear in a second.

  Then she asked herself: Where are the bullocks?

  She ran into the sun for a closer look. The farmer worked through his field in straight lines, starting from the leftmost end and ending at the right, and then turning around. As he approached she found that the contraption moved at no great speed, and that a faint whirr emanated from it, as though a top were spinning inside. When Nabha saw her, he straightened on his perch and gave her a bow.

  The sun had become stronger now, and she felt sweaty and dizzy, though at the back of her mind she knew that it was not the sun that was wringing her head. She had heard tales when she was a child that there were charioteers that cracked the whip with such speed and precision that it appeared to the naked eye as though they merely pointed with their arms and their horses followed. It was said that their horses galloped, but so smooth was their movement on the earth that they appeared to have wheels on them. Her father had laughed at these tales, and he had said that such horses and such charioteers perhaps existed only on Meru, where the gods rode winged beasts. But now here she was, not on Meru but in Mathura, the kingdom right across the river from her own home, where a sick, gnarly farmer was tilling his plough with invisible oxen.