The Rise of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  Suddenly it came to her why Mathura was known as the kingdom that could never be defeated, how a tiny city such as this with no fertile land could stand up to the might of the Great Kingdoms. It had been blessed by the gods. She had heard the farmer speak of temples and priests; perhaps they had sought the gods’ blessings with untold austerities, or perhaps they had ploughed the Goddess herself for secrets that she is said to have held within her, away from human beings.

  How often had she heard in Shurasena that Mathura’s boats sailed on water as if they were in flight, that their war barges cut though Yamuna’s harshest currents without drifting off course even a furlong, that the boats carried twice the number of archers as other boats the same size. If boats could be persuaded to sail on their own, thought Pritha, what need was there of oarsmen? On all boats there were more oarsmen than archers, and if Mathura could make boats that did not need oarsmen, she could stack them to the brim with archers, and she could scuttle enemy ferries in a trice.

  How often had she not heard in Kunti that Mathura was impregnable, and how often had she thought that it was just a tale of fancy, told and re-told by travellers on cold nights around a bonfire. But now here she was: on a bright morning on an open field, watching magic unfold. There was no fire around her, no sacrifice, no Brahmins chanting verses from the scriptures, no rituals – nothing – and yet this was magic beyond all the sages of the world.

  She looked back over her shoulder and saw Durvasa, folding his wet shawl in his arms and peering out from the doorway to the hut. Even from this distance, she saw that his face was set in a deep frown. She ran across the field back to the house, her feet digging into the fresh, moist earth with each stride. By the time she reached Durvasa her toes had black mud between them, and she panted like a dog. She bent forward, hands on thighs, and looked up at the sage.

  ‘By the holy isle and all that it stands for,’ whispered Durvasa, his blue eyes shining. Beads of sweat dotted his brow. ‘What is that thing?’

  ‘I know not, Sage,’ said Pritha, ‘but I think that is what gives Mathura her strength.’

  She turned around so that they could look at Nabha together. The farmer finished ploughing his field and was making his way back to them now, his turban set upon his head in a lopsided way, the loose end fluttering in the breeze. Set against the sun, Pritha felt he looked like the god of death, but the god of death rode a bull. Where was Nabha’s bull? She felt fear creep into her heart as the whirring thing approached them in its steady speed. When her hand sought Durvasa’s and held it, she noticed that even the sage’s palms had become sweaty.

  As it came nearer and the buzz got louder, Pritha saw that the smoke had a foul grey colour to it. Just as she was about to ask Durvasa what it meant, the plough lurched forward once and stopped. For a moment it stayed silent, and then it gave another sputtering cough, releasing another belch of black smoke into the air. The yoke fell to the ground, and the handle in Nabha’s hand creaked and bent away to one side, refusing to yield to his frantic yanks.

  ‘There you go, you piece of junk,’ said Nabha. He aimed a kick at the side of the plough with his good leg, and spat at it. Then he turned around, adjusted his turban, and walked up to them.

  ‘Get your things,’ he said to Durvasa, while taking off his turban and bowing in Pritha’s direction. ‘We will go to the temple to get my stone mended. The priest will show you the way to the High King’s palace too.’

  NINE

  Pritha and Durvasa sat facing each other in the cart amidst bales of hay and stray tomatoes. Nabha sat at the front and cracked the whip on the backs of the oxen. Between lashes he made strange sounds with his lips and tongue, which Pritha guessed meant something in the language of cattle. They went along the same path they had come the previous night, and in the morning light Pritha could see better the patches of barren land that stretched on either side. She looked at Durvasa to catch his eye, but the sage appeared engrossed in thought. Not even in the mountains up north would he have seen a sight such as the one they had seen in the field that morning.

  He would stitch his lips together tight and stare into the distance for a time, then he would steal a glance or two at the smooth black stone that sat by Nabha’s side. After a few moments he would shake his head and sigh, sometimes looking at her and smiling faintly, and sometimes looking through her as though she did not exist.

  Finally he asked Nabha, ‘Why do you not use the stone for this cart then, Nabha? Why do you torture the poor animals so?’

  Nabha replied without looking back, ‘Oh, we are not to use the stone for going from place to place, sir. The priests forbid it; they say the gods do not approve of such doings.’

  ‘You only use it to till your lands, then.’

  ‘Aye, and to milk my cows, sir. I have sixty eight heads of cattle, sir, I do, and I do not have any helping hands. I have to use the stone for that too.’ He paused to snort and wedge his tongue between his lips. ‘But it does not always do what it is meant to do, sir, as you saw this morning. I would love to have a farm boy, I would. Better than all the stones in the world.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Durvasa. ‘But the stone belongs to you, and you do not know how to mend it?’

  ‘Aye, sir, pray tell me how should I know the job of a priest? These stones are gifts from the gods, they tell us, and only the priests speak to the gods, sir, not common folk like me. The priests kneel down in their temples and pray, and the gods mend the stones and they’re given back to us.’

  ‘But you have certainly tried to open the stone, perhaps, or to break it with a hammer at least?’

  Nabha looked around and stared at Durvasa. ‘No, sir, a single scratch on the stone and they will take all our cattle, they will. There was a man whose farms were right next to mine, his name was Mitra, and he tried to break it open, they said. The next day the priests came to his house and snatched all his cattle away, sir! And they put him in prison too!’

  ‘But why do they do such things, Nabha? If the stone belongs to you, there is no wrong in trying to break it open, is there?’

  Nabha turned back to his oxen. ‘They say that if an unworthy man unlocks the secret of the stone, my lord, the gods will punish us all and take away their gift. No one in the kingdom will have the stone any more, they say, and therefore they must punish those who threaten to cause harm to all his brothers.’

  ‘So every time it stops working, you have to lug it all the way to a temple and get it mended by a priest?’

  ‘Aye, that is so.’ Nabha’s left hand went to the stone, and he caressed its surface. ‘But it does not need mending too often, my lord. The last time it stopped in the middle of a till was some six moons ago. And it only takes half a day to mend, you know.’ He cracked his whip with passion on the ox to the right, and it bleated in response. The cart quickened.

  They entered the city now, and on signal from Durvasa, Pritha wore her veil. From underneath the fabric she saw men crane their neck and look at her from within their stores. A row of water-carrying women in red gowns turned around as they passed, and smiled. Nabha raised his whip at them in greeting.

  He turned into a narrow lane and stopped in front of a mud hut at the very end of it. Pritha saw that a high wall had been erected to block the other entrance of the lane, which also prevented sunlight from entering. On both sides of the doorway, from the ground to the arch at the top, oil lamps peeked out from within small dark holes. When Nabha had said that they were about to go to a temple, Pritha had expected something grander, much like the marble temples back in Shurasena and Kunti, but this was no more than a hovel. Even Nabha’s house looked better than this, she thought, getting down from the cart and reaching for her sack.

  Inside the hut it was hot despite all doors and windows being open. Every ledge, every platform, every surface carried lighted oil lamps, and in the middle of the room, at the brightest point, under a hole in the roof through which a beam of sunlight entered, a basil plant stood in a brown pot of mud.
A youth wrapped in a wet, white cloth was ringing a bell with one hand and muttering prayers. With the other he clutched the cloth close to his chest. On his shoulders and forearms Pritha saw lines of sandal paste and moist ash.

  Pritha removed her veil and felt a layer of sweat gather under her garment. Nabha walked in front of them and bowed low in front of the plant. The priest acknowledged them with a nod and pointed them to the floor. Nabha crawled over and sat down, and motioned to them to do the same.

  After a while the priest finished his worship and came over to them. He pulled for himself a chair and sat on it, one leg crossed over the other. He had a boy’s certainty of step and gesture, and also his arrogance, thought Pritha. He waved his hand at Nabha and asked, ‘You have brought the stone with you.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Have you seen that the fire chamber was not empty?’

  ‘Yes, my lord, I did.’

  ‘Did you perform all sacrifices just as I told you?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. I gave my best goat to the stone on the previous full moon, and for this one I was going to give it my best bull.’

  The priest nodded solemnly. ‘And the worship?’

  ‘I did it just as you told me, my lord.’

  ‘How long has it been since you first took the stone from me, Nabha?’

  ‘About a year, my lord.’

  He nodded again, and pulled the white cloth around himself. Pritha saw black smudges littered over it, some fresh, most of them faint.

  ‘Perhaps the time has come, then, to mend it. Leave it with me and I shall pass it on to the high priests. You can return in seven days and take it back.’

  ‘Certainly, my lord.’

  For a few moments the priest tapped his fingers on the arm rest of his chair. His foot shook restlessly. He looked at Nabha. ‘Well?’

  Nabha began to scratch the back of his head. ‘Sire, these are friends of mine … traders from the city of Magadha.’

  The priest trained his eyes on Pritha, and she lowered her gaze. ‘Indeed? She does not look like a maiden from the far-east. Who is your father, girl?’ He called her ‘girl’ even though he could not have been much older than she – he was perhaps in his twenty-first year, no more.

  She raised her head to speak, wondering what to say, but thankfully Durvasa spoke up. ‘We belong to a family of stone traders at the eastern end of Magadha, my lord,’ he said. ‘For nigh on twenty years now the royal house gets their jewels made only from us.’

  ‘Indeed. I know of no such family in Magadha, and dare I say I know the city quite well.’

  ‘Sire,’ said Nabha, ‘they wish to see the High King about some matter, they do.’

  The boy looked at Durvasa first, then at Pritha, his mouth curving upward in a derisive smile. ‘Indeed, who does not wish to meet the High King.’ He sat up in his chair, leaning forward, trying to take a better look at them. ‘Tell me what you really wish, Brahmin, and tell me who this maiden really is.’

  Nabha dithered, ‘Sire, it is like this …’

  ‘Nabha, have you left your stone in my front room?’

  ‘Yes, my lord, I have.’

  ‘Then you may leave.’ He glanced at Pritha as he said, ‘I shall help your friends reach wherever they wish to go.’

  Nabha scratched the back of his neck again and looked at the ground. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Umm, okay.’ He looked at Durvasa, and upon getting a nod, got up to his feet and bowed.

  After Nabha had left, the priest went to the front door and closed it.

  ‘Now, sir,’ he said, pulling his chair closer to them.‘I am no foolish farmer to believe whatever you say. I am a priest. Now you shall tell me the truth, for if I see one more lie escape your lips, I warn you, sir, that the High King’s guards are only a mellow call away, and they like to speak more with their spears than with their mouths.’

  ‘And I suspect they do not speak as kindly as you do either, sir,’ said Durvasa.

  ‘They do not, and I tell you, sir; the only reason I am still speaking with you in words is because of this maiden here. I take no pleasure in your appearance or in your manner, but this maiden – I doubt not that you have cast a spell on her, for how else–’

  ‘She is my sister, sir,’ said Durvasa quietly.

  ‘I told you, Brahmin,’ said the priest, ‘I am no fool. In which world do Brahmin brothers have Kshatriya sisters? Look at the form of that woman, look at her face; she should not be out of her place in the High King’s palace, I dare say!’

  Durvasa sighed in an elaborate manner. ‘You seem to have caught us out, sir,’ said he, leaning back against the wall, raising one knee, and letting his arm rest on it. ‘So I shall tell you the truth. Our true aim is not to meet the High King.’

  ‘Of course it is not,’ said the priest.

  ‘It is to meet the maker of these black stones that Nabha uses to till his fields.’

  A strange change came over the priest’s plump features. His brow came together in a deep frown, and his mouth flattened. His breath grew heavier, like a little dog’s after a futile rabbit chase. ‘If you are from Magadha,’ he said, his eyes turning orange, ‘you should know that the maker of these stones is more valuable to Mathura than the High King himself.’

  Durvasa stayed calm. ‘I am aware of it.’

  ‘And yet you come walking into my hut and ask me about him, thinking, perhaps, that I shall take you by the hand into his chambers? One more moment here, Brahmin, and I shall call the guards, and I say you and your “sister” here shall see the blue of sky not once more in all your lives.’

  Durvasa sighed again, and got to his feet in one quick motion, which made the priest draw back a little in suspicion. Pritha looked up at him, eyes agape. ‘One moment, then, is all that I ask for, sir,’ he said, and reached for his sack.

  ‘Keep your hands off it!’ said the priest, springing to his feet, but Durvasa had already retrieved something from his sack, something that looked like a little brown ball of string.

  ‘Do not fear, sir, for I do not have the means to hurt you. You have called me a Brahmin, so take my word that I shall not harm a fellow Brahmin.’ As he spoke he undid the ball of string and wrapped it around all his fingers. As more and more twine came out, he rolled his fingers around it, and in no time at all both his hands were tied, and as he held them up, little more than a foot apart, a black star stood between them, its spikes trembling with each movement of his fingers like the limbs of a spider.

  Then he brought it close to his mouth, and with his eyes set on the young priest, he blew fire onto the star. The priest cried out, first in fear, and then as the flames travelled around the twine and left Durvasa’s fingers somehow unharmed, as the flames licked his skin without charring it and danced to his whims, bending this way and that, the young man’s mouth fell open, and he took two faltering steps away from the sage. Pritha walked back until her spine touched one of the teak beams that held up the roof, and she leaned back against it, thinking of all those things about Durvasa that Agnayi had said, that he was the son of the sage who descended from the lord of the Sun himself. Some others said that he came into being out of a vessel in which the Destroyer had trapped all his anger. Could any of that be true, she thought, staring at the live yellow lines trapped between his long fingers.

  The charred twine dropped to the ground in dust, and the air filled with the smell of burning flesh, but the sage’s hands were their usual smooth brown. Soon there was no string wrapped around the fingers, only lines of fire, and Durvasa’s eyes looked on at the priest in front of him, who had knelt down and joined his hands. The sage’s lips bent in a crooked half-smile, and his blue eyes were now a deep, scorching yellow.

  He extracted his fingers from within the rings of fire, and on another soft breath from his lips, the holes disappeared and became solid balls, one on each hand. He turned his fingers around them, as if soothing them, caressing them, and they went from swirling angrily to turning tamely, and the surface of the
balls began to harden even as the yellow molten liquid threatened to spill out and swallow the house. Short orange sparks flew out, bounced a couple of times on the mud floor, and died.

  Durvasa held his hands out to the priest. ‘Would you like to hold them, sir?’

  The priest shook his head in terror, and Pritha saw that his face was drenched in sweat. She licked her lips and tasted salt on her tongue. She ran her hand over her forehead and saw that it glistened in the orange light of Durvasa’s hands. His mouth took on the shape of a small circle once again, and with two soft exhales of breath, he fired up the balls, and looking around, he spotted a heap of wet teak beams in the corner.

  He allowed his hands to rest, and with a gentle roll, as though he were setting a wheel in motion, he sent the balls crashing into the beams. Pritha felt as though the breath inside her was being sucked out, as the fire closed in on one beam now, and then on a single point, which the sage pulled out with his right hand. Rolling his fingers under the ball so that it could stay suspended in mid-air, he turned to face the priest. The priest cowered like a frightened mouse and shook his head. A son of the Destroyer, was he? Or the sun himself?

  Pritha fell to her knees, intending to prostrate herself at the feet of the sage, but the moment she hit the ground she lost consciousness.

  ‘Pritha?’

  She opened her eyes with a start, and found that her hand was wrapped around Durvasa’s, and it was cold with sweat. She sat up with a start and leaned back against the beam. He held out a vessel of water for her. She took a sip.

  ‘Kurusti here has agreed to take us to the High Priest, Pritha,’ said Durvasa, nodding at the younger man, who squatted on his haunches in the corner. ‘If you are well enough, we shall start immediately and get there before nightfall.’

  Pritha nodded groggily and got up.

  TEN

  ‘I must ask for your forgiveness for the words I used before, my lord,’ said Kurusti, after they had settled into his chariot. It was better than Nabha’s, Pritha noticed; for one, the cart was drawn not by oxen but by two young, healthy mares. Kurusti tapped his charioteer on the shoulder and whispered something in his year, and upon a nod and a call to his horses, the vehicle lurched forward.