Until the Lions

by Karthika Nair

  Krishna’s chariot

  scythes a thousand soldier skulls.

  In war, rules fray first.

  IV. FAULT LINES

  Listen. Listen, you’d think life would transmute overnight. I had become aromatic, luminescent; some would even moot irresistible. But my father by now was half-blind, and our people’s fears were potent – alarmed by my reputed occult power, they fled to screaming distance. Rumour embraced me like vine; its tendrils overtook my voice, my fragrance. Priests and men landed at the riverbank, to be ferried, they claimed, but it was my story that was sought. They drew a blank, of course – this secret could not be bought, and the caste, the caste of fisher-folk, made most retreat. Some less timorous, a few rather sweet, did ask for my hand – four merchants, a yaksha, a monk. But the river-goddess sang to me in many tongues, both to praise and advocate. Take them. Take them in joy. Relish your will, relish youth and grace in bed. Be bold and celebrate. To rule a man, and his land, you need to learn just how much to give and withhold. Then said, but save your hand for the better mate; a worthier, nobler offer is yet to be sprung. A crown would be worth every wait, to replace the crown I’d lost when very young. I bade my time.

  Listen, a couple of years went by – sailboats adrift on horse latitudes. Then it happened at twilight one spring: it was a king all right, a king out on solitary hunt. He stared shamelessly but had the grace to be blunt: Lady, I don’t know your name or race or family, but your face and frame are splendrous, and your fragrance, your fragrance has me possessed. I am King Shantanu of Hastinapur, scion of the Kuru clan. Put your hand in mine, and you will be my queen, not concubine. I liked him for that. Had I been less steeped in loss, in distrust, the answer would have been pat. But my tongue was eager to thrust. But what of our sons and grandsons, King? Will they sit on your throne? Can they rule and own the kingdom after you? Quieter than a winter sun he grew, his gaze leached with pain, but he neither blustered nor beseeched, just rode off into the brewing night. The river remained silent, and I had no one else to tell me what all this meant. Three weeks later, at that very hour, the same chariot dashed to a stop before our home, bearing terror-struck charioteer and a dour, strapping teen – unfinished mirror to my vanished suitor – who lost no breath to vent his spleen: I am Devavrata, son of Goddess Ganga and King Shantanu, crown prince of Hastinapur. And you are the siren who’s drowned my father in torment. His nights and days are at standstill since he met you. His hours fill, he says, with visions of your toes, your lips, your scent and parts I choose to eclipse. He neither eats nor drinks; he cares little for foes and defeats. But think hard, lowborn strumpet, of the pitfalls of your ruse: he could have seized or abused you, he didn’t. Play coy any more, woman, and I’ll show you why not to toy with Kuru men! Hate rose from sleep. Hate blazed in belly and lung. Hate billowed through blood and bile. Hate dripped onto my tongue. Rude, foolish cub, your father is a man – unlike his son. He knows that to own a body gives no access to the heart. I’m no slice of land for your kin to possess, no tart to be cussed. Your father, yes, did offer to make me queen, but what can that mean, when it will end, as it must? What of my children? What lies ahead for them when you rise to the throne? I know your kind – here I rust, in this filthy hut, because a man like you couldn’t see the fruit for the rind.

  Our words snarled. Our words glared. Our words circled, baying for full victory – bare-clawed, fanged, tentacled. Organs ripped. Blood trickled. A century passed in an instant, a war was fought and won or lost in silence. Then he disowned his birthright, dropped the offence, I renounce my claim to the Kuru throne. Your sons can succeed. Just wed the king. I could have left it at that. I should have left it at that. My fears were freed. Hate could recede. But I didn’t. I didn’t and an epoch underwent a seismic shift. You may renounce crown and kingdom, but what of your sons, Prince? And what of their sons? How can you ensure there’ll be no blood-soaked rift? Perhaps I’d wanted to draw more than blood. Perhaps I’d wanted to gnaw his proud, young heart till he was no more than husk. His voice was clear, his voice was dusk – it girdled river, mountain, cloud and sky: Your sons will have nothing to fear from the understains of my breath. I swear, before gods in heaven and men on earth, I swear to stay celibate until death.

  Time stops in his path

  to watch Bheeshma in battle –

  each arrow, a song.

  V. FAULT LINES

  Bheeshma. Bheeshma: He of the terrible, tungsten oath. That’s how they renamed him, Devavrata, for plighting his troth to chastity, spurning manhood and monarchy in fealty to father and future brethren. The gods applauded, they loved children blighting lives with senseless vows for selfish kin. Bheeshma, they chanted – with gandharvas, rishis, apsaras in harmony. Bheeshma, lauded land and sea and sky; forests, oceans, glaciers. Bheeshma, the name seared in deep crannies of hell, pealed dark but clear as a temple bell from the throats of distant stars. Bheeshma, gifted near-invincibility, with renown till eternity by the gods for valour and filial sacrifice. Bheeshma, whose father the king, dearly pleased at his oath of abstinence – my bride-price – bequeathed a new boon, destined to curdle: the freedom to choose how and when to die.

  Listen. Listen, you’d think I’d won the sweeps: from fisher-maid to queen in the blink of an eye, and guaranteed queen-motherhood soon after. But he ensured victory didn’t come cheap, Bheeshma. A lie I couldn’t immure – the falsehood our first compact together. That was the fee, and it was steep: a lie that cast my father – gentle, clueless fisher-king – as raptor in every age. For when gods and numens had blessed and left the page, when land and sea and day had ended their warble, Bheeshma resumed, emotionless: We have one thing left to settle. And it’s a step you’ll want to reject, but I insist, for Kuru pride I must protect – despite your own lack of worth. The subjects will resent a lowborn royal bride, but if they know what you asked, they’ll be merciless. No one must think my celibacy was your demand: our queens are to be unstained, virtuous. It is your father we must brand as rapacious. I demurred, yes, but not enough. I could have called his bluff, flaunted my obstinacy, taken on court and kingdom undaunted. But I didn’t, I played along. I played along. I let down my foster clan. And, in every version of the tale that was spawned, the old fisherman laid down this odious stipulation. From Vyaasa to his scribe, the elephant-god, to his later tribe of bards – they all had a handy pawn to fit the mould. For the rest, it was as Bheeshma had foretold. The people loathed me at first rumour. Worshippers of their river-goddess queen, they clamoured I was no more than a drain. It took a while, but once my heavenly scent had done the job, there was no further uproar, and even, I found, some tacit assent. More, by a bound, than what Bheeshma would admit: courteous before an audience, he’d regress when no one was around; persist in calling me Daseyi. For him, I’d always be the slave princess. The king, meanwhile, blossomed with delight: autumn gave way to late spring. He held me like a gift to unwrap, bit by tender bit. A left ear, an upper lip, the line of a neck, my slender midriff, the curve of one hip, that cove north of these thighs…planets he’d orbit, then meet with long-solitary hands and tongue. And I, I liked being adored – strange and new a sight for one who’d so often been shunned. In palace gardens, on riverbanks, at noon and by moonlight – we never tired. To Bheeshma Shantanu left the charge of Hastinapur – the army, the treasury, everything but the crown – so he could pleasure himself and me, sire more sons.

  And soon, the nurseries were loud with our little ones: Chitrangada and Vichitravirya, not a crowd, but two happy, tuneless boys. Bheeshma, strangest of all, glowing in joy, careened in a trice from sullen, mutable teen to devout elder sibling – it all seemed a fable. (Seeing then glints of the father he’d never be, I had to clog frequent spurts of guilt.) Those were the years hate left us alone. Content became our home, not a lodestone. The king, untiring of my love, of this luscious scent, revelled with no fear for tomorrow. Even the people of Hastina – the first to d
rown in tides of sorrow – dwelt in ease. As did birds and trees, darts of starlight, the clouds come to jubilate, a roan sky. These I hold tight, now, in the palm of my heart: the years hate left us alone.

  Bheeshma roars, more pride

  than pain on being wounded –

  Arjuna’s, the lance.

  VI. FAULT LINES

  Listen. Listen, who ever marks the day fortune walks through the front door? Who flowers her tread with rose and juhi or sprinkles gloaming and grateful thought on the floor to keep her in? Who can recall if the song named joy sprang from earth for long, or not? Into an endless, sparkling instant condense years and years in times of bliss – or stability; an instant we believe enjoys a single nationality. But no. One day, joy flies at full-throttle; the next, freefall through mangled skies, and all that’s left to seize from pain-ridden ruins are memento mori. So it was with Hastinapur. First, Shantanu died. He died – but aged and fulfilled, eyes gathering, caressing sons and spouse. Mourned by kith and courtiers he left, quiet and soft as ebb tide. We grieved, we wept, for a few weeks life wore white. Yet joy survived.

  Then it returned, hate returned. Released by gods or demons, to flare and cremate Kuru peace and wellbeing for several spans. Hate returned in white calescent snare. I should have known it would, old hate, its grip on my blood perennial, pestilent. This time, hate was splendrous, indigohaired, celestial. This time, hate came in the guise of a god. A demigod: like umbra appeared a gandharva one afternoon to duel Chitrangada, new king of Hastinapur, for the sin of bearing his name and no other crime. Chitrangada – yes, my son; my firstborn, still wide-eyed at the cusp of kinghood – felled in one blow. Felled by this other Chitrangada – arrogant, uncursable, supernal rake – who would not swallow the slight of a mortal namesake. Slaughter that made no sense. But since when did the gods need reasons? This time, grief became a full season, sunless, dense. This time, pain put down roots – leaden, hairy – through heart and head, grew stalk and stem, bled sap into throne, into bedstead. We mourned, Bheeshma the most – so much more than I – for a kin twice beloved: brother, almost-son, and worthy sovereign. But the throne, he proclaimed, must continue, the throne was meant to withstand every loss; the throne was all he’d now prize and shield or rue as next-of-kin, he’d weep no more for men, would yield his heart as amulet. Regents, we were firmly told, like Queen Mothers, could not grieve for long. We made Vichitravirya, my younger one, mount the royal horse.

  Listen. Listen, the boy had no regal pride, no thirst to bestride the realm or age: this prince preferred to drink himself into tuneful trance, chase palace maids, unleash verse in free torrent. Such is the nature of karma, of her silent, sinuous dance: when proclaimed king, my son handed sword and sceptre back to his sibling: yes, to Bheeshma whose fate I had deviated. I coaxed, I sneered, I berated. I even found tepid, shameful tears to shed. In vain. In vain: Vichitravirya would not budge. He hadn’t wished – nor judged himself set – to be monarch, he said, that may be our whim or will, but not one he would indulge – at least not just yet. Besides, he remarked, diving for safety within time-tested sutra, didn’t dharma dictate he swim in his elder brother’s wake? The forefathers would never forget such immorality: wouldn’t his own atma be at stake were he to snatch Bheeshma’s birthright? I could have killed him at that, flesh of my flesh or not, that ingrate, humbug sybarite with his overflowing plume and schlong. How inconstant love can be – even a mother’s, I discovered: as swift to fade as to bloom, not much more than a drift of wayward spume. I could have killed the bugger thrice each day, each time he spurned the hard-won Kuru crown with casuistry on duties to the dead. All hogwash, each syllable: my son gave less than a toss for ancestral fury, or his own immortal soul. Communion with the nearest quim was his sole cherished goal. Oddly, it was Bheeshma who brought us back from the rim. Bheeshma, who – though fraught with dread at the state of things, at the thought of such an airhead, unsound future king – calmed me down, reminding at every stage, He is the heir we are bound to protect – from our very selves, if we must. Now is the time for measured action, not outrage. For it was a molten, unsafe era; an age not unlike a caldera – those years just after twin royal deaths in lewd succession: there were bloodier, hungrier beasts to face, no little thanks to Vichitravirya’s dissipation. Swarms of eyes began to peck at the outer edges of our realm: legions came to steal cattle, two regiments encroached on abounding, arable land, an army primed for battle while their envoy arrived with an offer for my hand. A queen and country without their monarch, he read tonelessly, are livestock awaiting a farmer’s earmark, then added lest we hadn’t seen the score, Hastina and the glorious Satyavati – of fisher-caste though she may be – deserve the aegis of a real man, not the charge of a eunuch and an effete prince. Memories stand steadfast – as clouds or smoke. They rise and retreat, they run amok, memories change from seahorse to elephants to kettledrum. Who was the insolent king, where lay his kingdom? What was his name, and what happened after? The mind scuttles tongueless through that episode: there is little I recall, little besides a head dripping death and ignominy, rent by Bheeshma at my feet. Handsome the head too, handsomer it would have been without a crescent gorge where eyes usually flank a human nose. Why do kings and lawmakers, regents, sons – the whole bloody race – never think with their heads, just ask a woman what she wants: the question rose once more, and, once more, sank without trace.

  It was Bheeshma’s second round of celebrity – the first in many moons. A wild-eyed, vengeful Bheeshma this time: he of the terrible, tungsten oath that would claim libation all too soon, for an epithet hurled with derision in foreplay to combat. Eunuch. Eunuch. Eunuch. Castrate. Epicene. The words would nictitate through dream and day as dire birthstone; sear tongue and brain and spleen. They’d sink and spread beneath his skin, reticulate in thick spikes of grey-green. I should have seen the tempest coming. I should have known maimed vanity would win over reasoning.

  Call him Shikhandi,

  Amba, Vengeance: Bheeshma’s end

  bears love’s covenant.

  AMBA/SHIKHANDI

  MANUAL FOR REVENGE AND REMEMBRANCE

  I.

  Air old wounds adorn eyes and scars with kohl with curcuma armour head to shank in ancient hate in cast-iron memory anchor the earth to both feet align the zenith to the spine bow bow eastward to destiny then south to death who is patient kind and constant buttress the sinews of thighs brace both palms borrow bowstring from the gut of the lord of sea-serpents bend the limbs of the bow cord the upper to the lower camber them into quarter-moons convex its sylvan back constrict its belly chisel arrowheads from fallen comets swords from sheet lightning a mace out of the heart of volcanoes carve the names of foes on shaft and hilt and head distil wrath from the ocean draw out spite from ascetics divine guile from the gods drink deep then douse all weapons in the same brew expunge name and sex and ancestry

  And begin

  Begin to begin2

  Begin to end

  For it is time. But it was always time. It’s time,

  I’d bayed at gods, at monarchs, time and time again,

  through the months, the years I prowled this planet – her plains,

  her jungles, her unmanned peaks – crossing every clime,

  drought and squall and viler seasons: the burning rime

  they call disgrace, unconcern – fall of lasting pain;

  bayed first for a word: your pledge, remorse – true or feigned,

  a salve; for a scourge on your name, your breath, your crest, slimed,

  gangrened with senseless, heartless right. It is time, then,

  time for gods and demons to concede one last boon:

  time to reclaim your end, and time that I may rend

  this unloved, unending instant – into brave men

  unscathed by oaths, nights steeped in desire, maids immune

  to disrepute: the lives, lifetimes we lost
unspent.

  II.

  Expunge name and sex and ancestry erase kinship honour mercy from hand and eye and pennant etch that litany of injuries into the bone where they will erode nerve and marrow enflame belly and lungs with jagged wrongs forge the keenest of spears in a kiln fed on dry rage on dull hurt free this arm fire it into every future fell fell one then two and ten and legions fell light fell sight fell history gouge out the sun gut the sky grave dread into minds gash their lungs garrotte hope before heartbeat hammerlock the spinning planet halt the fleeing day hold it tight till enemies flag hurl lances bolts halberds into distant chests and temples hack what’s close at hand clavicles shoulderblades breasts but harness your heart hide its eyes from those other familiar hearts neighbours teachers playmates lest it hurtle past its ribcage and hasten to them those frayed failing moth-winged hearts so ignite them all

  Now begin again

  Begin to win

  Begin to end

  III.

  Freedom. It was freedom you feared, was it not, my

  ancient virgin prince? Freedom – that siren song you

  could neither touch nor taste – to die, to want, to do,

  to disobey. And worse, much worse to your curst eye,

  the freedom to love and wed: Father’s last gift – high,

  lustrous as a star – to his girls; one you’d construe

  and curse as diabolic, depraved, a plot brewed

  to unman the Kuru clan. Revenge, your reply: