by Unknown
Suyodhana could see the Brahmin consulting his five cousins about something. Yudhishtra was pointing excitedly towards the palace. Bhima stood there wearing the look of someone trying hard to understand what was going on. Suyodhana's eyes wandered away to rest on the small Brahmin boy, who lingered a few feet away from his parents. The boy looked around and his eyes locked onto the ripe yellow mango gleaming in the sun. He gazed longingly at the fruit and then darted towards it. He was about to touch it when a small dark figure jumped out from behind a bush and in a swift movement, grabbed the mango from the sand, leapt over the startled boy, and ran off as if his life depended on it. The stupefied boy gave chase. The intruder was looking back as he ran and so did not see the looming figure of Bhima standing in his path. It was only at the last moment that he turned to see the huge Pandava staring menacingly at him. Bhima stood in combat position, and just as the boy reached him, he threw a deadly punch at the boy's head. The boy ducked and in one fluid moment, without breaking stride, swooped down and pulled hard at Bhima's legs. Bhima fell flat on his face.
Suyodhana and Sushasana could not control themselves any longer. They laughed aloud, clutching their bellies, while Sushala joined in, clapping her little hands excitedly and jumping up and down.
The Brahmin turned and saw the urchin in the midst of the Princes, holding the disputed mango. His own son was a few feet away, bawling with all his might, to attract even more attention since he discovered the others were somehow interested in his loss. The five Princes closed in on the helpless urchin, led by the tall Brahmin.
"Guards!" the Brahmin yelled at the figures near the gate.
The two bored soldiers reluctantly got up from their reclining positions and lumbered towards the group. The hot sun was now scorching every blade of grass and the soldiers silently cursed the stranger for making them leave the shade. The urchin stood trembling with fear as the Princes and the Brahmin glowered at him. Bhima had a murderous look in his eyes and was still smarting from the humiliating fall he had taken. As the wind had turned, Suyodhana and his siblings could clearly hear the conversation.
Bhima moved towards the urchin, but the Brahmin immediately said, "Do not touch him and pollute yourself". Bhima looked confused and turned towards the Brahmin, who asked the urchin, "Which caste do you belong to?"
When the boy realized the Brahmin had asked him the question, he lowered his head. How was it, he wondered, that before anyone even asked him his name, they asked about his caste? He mumbled something that did not carry to the Kaurava Princes in their tree.
"What! A Nishada so close to the main fort gate of Hastinapura! An Untouchable walking on the royal highway? Is this how the King runs his kingdom? What can one expect of a blind man? It is no wonder such transgressions of dharma happen here." The Brahmin turned to the eldest Pandava. "What is the punishment meted out to rascals who commit such violations in the kingdom of the Kurus?"
The Pandavas appeared embarrassed and did not know what to say. The boys looked at each other. "I can break his head," volunteered Bhima, still smarting from the fall he had taken at the hands of the Nishada urchin half his size.
"Quiet!" The colour drained from Bhima's face. Turning to Yudhishtra the Brahmin said, "You are going to be the next King. You say how we should deal with this rascal. Let me see what my brother-in-law, Kripa, has taught you."
Yudhishtra tensed, trying to remember the correct answer. 'Kripa's brother-in-law? Was this Drona? So this was the famous guru whose arrival we all awaited.'
Eyes wide with surprise, Suyodhana quickly slid down the slope towards the commotion as his siblings followed. Something Drona had said to Yudhishtra jarred Suyodhana's mind: 'next King'. 'How can Yudhishtra be the next King of Hastinapura? I am the eldest son of the reigning King, Dhritarashtra,' wondered the young Prince. 'Uncle Pandu ruled on my father's behalf because of his blindness. That does not mean Pandu's son becomes the next ruler of Hastinapura when the time comes.' This was precisely the kind of conspiracy his Uncle Shakuni had warned him against.
Seeing Suyodhana and his siblings approach, the gaunt and fair Brahmin boy looked at them with apprehension and moved closer to his mother. Suyodhana looked at the boy's finely etched face. Curly hair fell to his shoulders and his curved mouth and aquiline nose spoke of innocence and inner beauty. The Kaurava Prince smiled at him in passing.
"Aswathama, come here," called the Brahmin and the boy moved towards his father apprehensively. "What punishment is proper for this rascal?"
Before Aswathama could answer, the dark boy took to his heels, losing the mango on the way. He nimbly jumped over the diminutive Aswathama and ran towards the jungle like a monkey, escaping his captors. Aswathama ran to pick up the fallen mango from the sand, but before he could touch it, his father stopped him. "Get that boy!"
No one moved. Suyodhana watched the dark boy vanish into a flurry of waving foliage, which became still in a moment. The guards took off in reluctant pursuit of the Nishada who had polluted the royal highway and dared to steal from the royal grounds. Suyodhana knew the guards did not usually take such minor transgressions seriously as the poor always flocked to the palace gates and foraged for leftovers. Except when royalty was present on the highway, the caste rules were not strictly applied. It was too hot to pursue a small boy for such a silly crime and not worth the effort. The guards made a great show of searching for him and prayed the Brahmin would go away and leave them in peace to complete their game of dice. However, the Brahmin would not let them be. He stood in the blazing sun, waiting for the incompetent guards of Hastinapura to capture the culprit.
"What a surprise, brother!" The booming voice of Kripa, the Princes' teacher, broke the spell. Immediately, all the Princes bowed to their Master. Kripa turned towards them saying, "Have you nothing better to do than play in the hot sun? Have you finished the homework I gave you yesterday?"
"Yes Guruji," cried Arjuna, while Suyodhana cursed himself silently for having forgotten.
"You boys go and revise yesterday's lessons. I will take my brother-in-law to Bhishma. So, how was the journey? Hey! Aswathama, you have grown. You are almost as tall as me now." Kripa tried to catch the small boy who was hiding behind his mother.
"Kripa, don't touch him! He touched a Nishada boy," said Drona.
"What? All that is nonsense, Drona." Kripa grabbed the squealing Aswathama by his waist and threw him up into the air.
Kripi, the boy's mother, stood beaming, thankful that her brother had broken the tense scene. Her husband was still watching the guards but Kripa had started walking towards the palace with little Aswathama perched on his broad shoulders. The Pandava Princes and Kripi followed in his wake. Reluctantly, Drona turned, making a mental note of the loose way in which things were run in the largest empire of India. He would have a word with the Regent of the Kurus about such blatant violations of the caste rules. 'No wonder the rain gods are angry and have refused to shower their blessing on this land for the last two years,' he thought.
As the group vanished behind the safety of the fort gates, the little boy perched on the broad shoulders of Guru Kripa, turned back to look at Suyodhana and his siblings, who were counting their haul of mangoes. He smiled at them and Suyodhana grinned back. Neither had any inkling of what life had in store for them.
***
The Nishada boy, who had vanished into the bushes earlier, now darted back to pick up the discarded and forgotten mango. Sushasana grabbed him by his narrow waist but let go when Suyodhana came forward. 'Does he expect me to fall at his feet?' the Nishada boy wondered when he saw Suyodhana. He struggled to hold back his tears, trying to garner as much dignity as possible in his tattered clothes. Suyodhana picked up the mango and offered it to the boy. The urchin was stunned; then he extended a hand to grab the precious fruit. 'Why are you looking so surprised Prince? But then, what do you know about hunger?' the Nishada thought, as he tore into the fruit like a wild animal. Suyodhana pulled his little sister towards him and took th
e mangoes she was carrying in her skirt. Ignoring the girl's protests, the Prince dropped all the fruits in front of the Nishada and stood back.
Hunger had forced the boy to enter the royal grounds to find food for his starving family. His aunt had been afraid the guards would catch him. Stealing was something he had never contemplated in their better days but when poverty caught up with morality, the lines between the acceptable and unacceptable somehow vanished. He knew that his aunt would be watching the unfolding scene, hidden behind a bush, along with his cousins. They had not eaten for two days. When he had told her of his plan, she had protested just a little. Now he regretted the impulsive thought, sure the Hastinapura guards would drag him to the dreaded prison cells near the Khandiva forest.
"The mangoes are for you," the young Prince said.
The boy stood confused for a moment and then grabbed the mangoes with alacrity, before the Prince could change his mind. His hands could hold only a few and Suyodhana moved to pick up the ones that fell from the urchin's desperate grasp. The Nishada boy held the mangoes close to his chest as the Prince piled on the fallen ones.
"Now go before they see you," Suyodhana said, pointing to the guards, engrossed in their game of dice.
The boy ran towards his aunt, who was watching with baited breath. As the boy was about to enter the jungle, Suyodhana called out to him. The boy's heart lurched. Was the Prince calling to take back his gift? His eyes filled with tears of anger and frustration.
The Nishada stopped in his tracks. When he turned, the Prince was smiling and waving at him. "Hey, what is your name?"
The sun was blazing overhead. The earth beneath his feet seemed to be melting in the fierce heat. He took a deep breath and shouted back, "Ekalavya". Wondering at his own audacity, he ran into the safety of the jungle without waiting to hear what the Prince was trying to say.
***
As the class dragged on through the hot afternoon, Suyodhana sat thinking of Ekalavya's hungry and tired face; and the poverty that had made him dare trespass into the royal grounds. Shutting out the sounds of an enthusiastic Arjuna trying hard to impress his new Guru with his command over the scriptures, Suyodhana's mind remained on the poor Nishada boy. 'Perhaps I ought to learn more about him and his people,' the Prince thought as he caught the eye of a beaming Aswathama, sitting near his father. The boys exchanged grins as their eyes communicated in the silent way only boys of their age can, about how boring the class was.
"Suyodhana, stop your day-dreaming and listen!" The angry voice of Guru Drona broke the monotony of the class and pulled the young Prince back to the dry world of scriptures and holy books and away from life and his dreams.
Arjuna and Yudhishtra were competing with each other to recite the Vedas. Suyodhana tried to keep himself awake. Outside, the earth lay soaked in the red of the setting sun and far away from the palace, a tired, black Nishada woman and her five boys slept contentedly after breaking their long fast. A few feet from them, another little boy sat nibbling the mango seeds the Nishadas had thrown away.
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3 CHILD OF THE FOREST
EKALAVYA DID NOT KNOW WHY the Kaurava Prince had behaved the way he had. It had been a reckless mission to get into the royal grounds to steal mangoes, but hunger had ripped away his fear. He had been prepared for a lashing by the guards if he was caught, what he had not expected was the strange behaviour of the young Prince in his expensive silken clothes. There had to be a catch somewhere. No high-born person behaved that way. It was as strange as expecting a lion to be meek and eat grass. He asked his aunt whether the mangoes were poisoned. He had been afraid to touch them since they had been given to him so freely but his starved cousins grabbed the fruit from his hands; so he forgot all about poison and princes in the immediate need to fight them for the luscious fruit. His aunt intervened, giving the best fruit to her children. Ekalavya got a not-so-ripe one. The favouritism was nothing new to him but it still hurt. He was determined not to cry over such things. He was ten years old now and almost a man. Men did not cry over silly things.
From the time Ekalavya could remember, they have been walking across India - his aunt, her five sons, and he. It was nothing new to people like them. He had no recollection of ever having a mother and his father existed only in the fantastic tales his aunt sometimes told him. His mother had died the day he was born. Distressed, his father had gone away, leaving little Ekalavya in his brother's charge. Sometimes, she would talk about his father, saying he was a Prince or a King somewhere in the East, and one day he would rescue them all from poverty, but on most occasions, she cursed him for having abandoned his son. She often reminded Ekalavya that he was nothing better than an orphan.
Ekalavya had the faint memory of a man who would carry him when he was only as high as his thigh. This man was the uncle his father had left him with. He now lay buried somewhere in the deep jungles of central India. He had been caught stealing eggs from a farm and was beaten to death. Whenever they went hungry, and that was quite often, his aunt called out her husband's name. She wailed that had he been alive, they would have all lived like princes. Ekalavya was old enough to know that was not true. He had seen so many others like themselves, living in the shadows of a great civilization, meek before their superiors, while ferociously competitive and cruel to their fellow unfortunates.
Ekalavya could tolerate his cousins but there was another small boy who kept trailing after them. He was even dirtier than they were and had bad teeth and festering sores on his legs. His ribs stood clearly outlined under his stretched and cracked black skin; while his belly button protruded from his bulging stomach like a mushroom. The family often chased him away but he never gave up. Ekalavya's aunt even threw stones at the creature but like a mangy dog, the dirty boy followed them, trying to pick up leftovers and begging for food. He darted away from the pelted stones, only to reappear. Sometimes his aunt felt pity for the boy and offered the urchin whatever they could spare. He grabbed it with both hands and gnawed like a hungry beast of the forest. However, that was rare for they hardly had enough to ease their own hunger.
Nevertheless, the boy kept trailing them. He had found them in the village where Ekalavya's uncle had been thrashed to death. Another man had been caught stealing at the same time and he too, met the same fate. Ekalavya's aunt found the little boy crying near the inert body of his father. Despite her own grief, she had felt pity for the helpless little one and since she was in no mood to eat that day, she had given him her share of food - a mistake she regretted the moment she had handed over the scraps. Now, like a curse, the boy followed them. Some days they would get lucky when some merchant would feed the poor as an offering to the gods to keep him prosperous. Ekalavya noticed that at such times his aunt became generous and offered the boy something more than mere leftovers. She would also talk to him kindly. It was during one of those rare conversations that Ekalavya learnt his name - Jara.
Now, Ekalavya turned away from Jara's hungry gaze. He knew the boy was waiting for him to finish his mango so he could suck at the seed Ekalavya would throw away. Finally, when he was sure there was nothing left Ekalavya threw the seed away. He despised the creature who stooped so low as to eat the leftovers of a Nishada but he also despised himself for being cruel to the hungry boy. The boy showed no fighting spirit. He was a dog. Ekalavya spat on the ground in disgust. 'Our lives are like those mango seeds; chewed, sucked clean and spat out,' he thought bitterly.
Ekalavya could hear the boy rummaging for the mango seed. He felt a sudden rush of tears when he heard Jara's joyous yelp. Like a rat, Jara sat and nibbled at the seed that had already been picked clean. Deep in his heart, Ekalavya wanted to kill the Prince who had so patronizingly given him the mangoes. It pained him that he was dependent on the generosity of princes and merchants. He looked at his own spidery limbs. 'I am a man now,' he thought. 'I should be able to provide for my family.' He was a Nishada and had any of the older males of his family been
alive, he would have been taught the skills of a hunter; but they had travelled far away from the hills of Vindhya, where their tribe lived. Ekalavya stared at the sleeping faces of his aunt and five cousins and felt a wave of pity and helplessness.
Ekalavya had hidden one plump mango in his waistcloth, to eat after his aunt and cousins went to sleep. It was the best one and he knew that if his aunt had seen it, she would have given it to her sons. He wanted to eat it alone. Jara's eyes glistened in anticipation. The moon had risen over the low shrub-covered hills, bathing the earth in silver. Ekalavya looked at Jara. He considered throwing the mango to him but it was too good to be wasted. He plunged his teeth into the smooth fruit and sucked. Jara gulped. Disgusted, Ekalavya threw the half-eaten fruit to the waiting boy, who grabbed it.
As Ekalavya stood up, he heard the sound of hoofs. Far away, among the thorny shrubs, he could see the silhouettes of mounted men. Nagas! Ekalavya stood dumb with terror, rooted to the earth. The Nagas were the most dreaded of all tribes and they were moving towards the palace under cover of darkness. He could see the horses' dark manes glistening in the moonlight. His aunt stirred in her sleep and let out a sigh. Ekalavya could see a tall, dark figure leading the pack. Moonlight caressed his body, turning him into an eerie figure in silver. Jara was still sucking the mango noisily and Ekalavya was afraid the Nagas would hear and come to investigate.