Listen. Listen, I was a fool. A fool, for I’d forgotten how dour and ruthless, how insane they were, the gods. The gods or Fate or maybe the cosmic clock, call it what you must. Fools we were all, to let down our guard, not to recall that in an instant our worlds could unspool from light to sodding dust. An instant that spawned more – or did it return endlessly, never growing old? He died. Vichitravirya died. In less than a night and a day, he was gone; leaving widows and throne but no offspring to grace them: unreliable to the end. We prayed, we cried, we bribed and bullied priests and mystics. Quacks and medics tried their damnedest – afeard for their heads – but found no cure. He writhed, he throbbed, he spewed insides green and red, he seethed and swelled into a carbuncle – a sight eyes that had birthed or loved could hardly endure. And then he was dead. Dead. It seems simple enough to utter, the word. Like manure or cinder or slough. Dead. But what does one do once the word is said? It filled my being, choking breath: this instant that bred endlessly. Bheeshma turned to stone, for all he’d waived attachment. The court spun like a planet around an absent sun, blind and useless. Hastina’s subjects moved in silent dread. The girls – for they were queens no more, no more sirens, no more wives: two clueless adolescents, adrift of all mooring – outpoured, loud and rent as monsoon clouds. Dead. What could you do once the word was said?
Listen. Listen, I did as queens should – froze grief and rage and severed motherhood, buried a maimed heart and strove for the kingdom’s good, for safe, secure, continued nationhood. I ruled. In the absence of a king and heir, in the presence of a regent supine with despair, I ruled. And I counted the hours, the days with care to know if deliverance could still be mine. On the fourteenth day, both girls began to bleed. There could be no child: Vichitravirya had shared no seed. The Kuru dynasty would be chined. Calamity bared his fangs in glee, the horrid, hydra-headed swine, but he’d overlooked Satyavati. For I would not be thwarted by death or sterility: this line was my declared legacy. Now was not the place for pledge or prayer – besides, I had lost my faith in gods and seers. I convoked Bheeshma: it was time he broke one word to keep another.
I scarce recognised the gaunt, bloodshot moon looming over my door. His frame still belonged to summer – and always would, with a grateful father’s boon – but Bheeshma’s heart wore winter: December had invaded June. Daseyi, you summoned. It could sting, the slur, though I had grown attuned by now. Bheeshma, your youngest brother died childless. This land has neither king nor heir. It will soon spell the end of the Kuru clan, unless you intervene. The souls of your ancestors will be marooned in hell, without progeny to perform rituals. You alone can cocoon their prized heritage: fulfil your dharma, accept your primary duty to the forefathers: beget sons. He looked at me, aghast and undiscerning: Has grief strewn your wits? How can you forget my oath? I swore celibacy. Any pledge of mine must last at least a lifetime. Oh, Shiva! For a man of fine intellect, my stepson could be a real prune. How could I forget – you made that vow for my children’s sake. My bloodline may have ended, Bheeshma, yet the Kuru kingdom must be defended: it is more precious than you or I or any oath. The Vedic runes are lucid on the score, they call it niyoga: the last resort and prescribed when faced with a dire situation, like ruination of the race. You swore once to protect this land and your kin with blood and breath. If you wish to preserve that oath, bed your brother’s wives, one by one, until they bear children – that is, sons.
He grew tall, he drew cold: Bheeshma blew into a typhoon, dark and vicious. It all felt old, twice-lived as he bellowed: I care little for injunctions from gods and scriptures; care even less if our clan is faced with ruination. Not if they threaten my troth. There is no greater truth for Bheeshma than his oath. I can cede you my life, Daseyi – I did already – and spill all remnants of jiva but not revoke my celibacy. Not for dead ascendants nor an inconstant throne, not ancient scrolls, nor some uncaring slice of stone. The stupid, myopic man – couldn’t he see I was trying to atone, restore the regent to his kingly place, at least on loan? Couldn’t he agree that self-interest would be virtuous in this case, and stop grinding the same old bone? But this was also a word you gave – why should one oath eclipse another? If you are nothing loath to break one of the two, Bheeshma, choose the path that will serve the greater number!
Our words snarled. Our words glared. Our words circled, baying for full victory – bare-clawed, fanged, tentacled. Organs ripped. Blood trickled. A century passed – again – in an instant, a war was to be fought and lost or won in silence but he spoke when I called him quisling, and the battle came undone. Bheeshma spoke. He spoke and I stared into the unwashed, unfading night of his pain. My second oath – that yokes me to Hastina – pared Kashi to smoke and char, got Amba branded a tart by her swain. With the first bloody oath, I then took her life apart, choked her womanhood and wrecked every chamber of her heart. Honour, home, then husband – she saw each one depart at my hands. That beauty, that grace, that goodness wither outside palace doors: heaven despoiled for one upstart cause. What more ruin could a man impart? No, Daseyi, no, I cannot revoke my word and take another woman – for any reason, be it so dire, so noble – when Amba’s loss and my guilt are immeasurable. To renege now – merely for this clan’s continuity – would be treason to that woman, to my wretched soul. I shall await her justice, for justice there must be, and abjure joy and love and woe until it befalls. Stand by and for the Kuru throne I will, Daseyi, till breath stalls but do not ask more, for I have nothing left to bestow.
Listen. Listen, he was right. I could not ask anymore. Men are beasts of contrary, cockeyed principles, and Bheeshma more than most. This time, though, his reasoning rang clear. It was the least he could do, in his tortured, tortuous way, to stay true to the woman whose life he – we, a silent voice seared – had erased, a woman whom death too would not appease. The only woman – no, human – he’d ever praised, this strange son of a river-goddess, so estranged from the earth he had been cursed to inhabit. I ceased the exhortations and turned to leave but his voice – anguish now eased – stayed my feet: But you could also ask a priest, you know, a priest or a hermit, if not a brother of the deceased: niyoga can be practised by brahmins of distinction – this, the scriptures underscore. Any rishi can lease his manhood to restore a lineage facing early extinction, should the task be undertaken with altruistic intent. This has been tried before, mostly when war wiped out full families. Is there an ascetic you consider both upright and brilliant? It would not be the same, I sighed, for there would be no Kuru blood in descendants.
Listen. Listen: memory, slow yet luminescent, then opened like shafts from an ancient sun. Vyaasa. The sage born of a Brahmin-Nishada conjugation, mine with that old, roving rishi: Parashara his name, I later learnt, himself author of the first purana. Vyaasa, the island-born, my eldest who had arrived on earth full-grown. My sole surviving son. Now renowned, editor of the scriptures, and scribe, it was said, of a defining legend: a great literary pedigree. Vyaasa prefixed Ved and, alternately, Krishna Dvaipayana – for birthplace and skin tone, inversely. Yes, Vyaasa might be trusted, and certainly seemed worthy (if another pompous one). I shared the thought with Bheeshma who gazed at me with something close to esteem. Ved Vyaasa is your son? Why, Queen, you must have been deemed second to none in virtue and fortune to be so blessed. Parashara is a man of extreme sagacity, imbued with good taste and vision. He would have chosen his son’s mother with assiduity. With lust surging in his loins, Parashara, that distant noon, wouldn’t have known sagacity had it kicked him in the groin: assiduity had little to do with his decision. But I didn’t disabuse Bheeshma of his wide-eyed notion – admiration had been a long time coming, so I stockpiled for a rainy day and merely wondered if such a paragon would respond to my request. Bheeshma, oddly, felt no such unrest: sages were exemplary sons, he held, and obliged to fulfil parental behests.
For once, he was right. Two twilights after my summons, Vyaasa graced the palace gates – grungy and modest for s
uch a luminary. He may have been the godliest of humans, but, by Ganga, he smelt. He stank of dead fish and dried pee, of fresh dung and sodden pelt – with whiskers and mane more rampant than a beaver’s nest. Parasha, alas, hadn’t invested in our son’s appearance. Still, he had come: moot was the rest. So we finally meet, Vyaasa, for the first time since you were birthed, almost three decades back. Your cerebral conquests precede you: they would make any parent proud. Allow me to manifest gratefulness for your swift response, my delight in your fame. Vyaasa looked amused – and resigned. Mother, I am happy to hear you call me a credit to your name. But, please, let’s not jest. Surely you didn’t invite me after years of oblivion to express the maternal joy in your breast? Speak without caesura or rhetoric: tell me how best to serve your aim. So I spoke, spoke without guile or frame, stressing the urgency of my quest in uncertain metre – spilling spondee and iamb and anapaest, the words kingdom duty legacy heir and continuity whirling with danger cessation external contest then claim in rapid refrain.
Listen. Listen, Vyaasa did not reply instantly. He gazed long and intent, as though at some distant, prismatic flame, then murmured, in tones of thoughtful disinterest: Normally, I would refuse, especially as I do not find children – in general – a sound idea nor a source of narrative interest. They are untame plot points, plangent asides and plain pests. Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful you had me. All the same, so much more thankful to have been egested full-grown! Ô, the undying shame had I required to be washed and fed! Enough said: I need to write my story – which will come to a summary stop should your dynasty stay unbuilt. Tathastu: we will proceed. But be warned before we get to the deed: half the earth will blame you for this resurgence in surrogacy, reigning player in a future game of thrones. It seemed a paltry fee; it still does – if only in arrested dreams.
Dry-eyed, Vyaasa writes
The Great War, systole swift
each time blood spills blood.
POORNA
I. BLOOD MOON RISING: POORNA WITH VYAASA
Begin with the labia, Lord. Make me
a word, swift and feather-light, a flurry
beneath the philtrum nuzzling the upper,
then lower lip, teasing teeth apart, swirls
on tongue-tip and blade and root that carry
ribbon lightning to the brain, the smokey wine-
sting of caresses on a hard palate.
Transform from noun to verb these lips. Savour.
Brush. Sip. For tonight, we need no food to dine.
Should anyone ask for my keepsake, my sign3
of birth or station, tell them, Lord, nothing matters
but this nightsong: with alaap of twined tongues; tatters
of pulse that will drut in teentaal; the raag bahaar
of your breath deep within my throat; hip and thigh, shaft,
pubis – in long bandish, flesh to flesh, that shatters
thought and time. For mating, like music, is no race:
no clocks await at start or finish, pleasure shared stays
the sole prize – and keepsake, as faces change, voices drift,
signs wilt. Save its five-chambered heart, treasure misplaced
by gods. Write the colour henna. Sign the name grace.
Name its fragrance earth. Colour its music
midnight. Label the shape Desire – relic,
once more, from heaven. Measure its weight
as sunlight, but also planet. (Add
a fifth veda, Lord, penned in euphoric
verse, on kama – unnamed melody
that lends harmony to both virtue and wealth –
and spell how kama, dharma, artha usher
as one moksha, the last remedy.)
With your finger on my fair body,
resume writing, My Lord, define
your landscape of pleasure. Your spine
arches: permit my hands maiden
journeys, let one graze lush terai
around a chest, scale the incline
of collarbone, then reappear
on the nape of a neck, curving your
head towards my breasts. The other hand
trails your behind, tracing half-spheres
now and then. The moon dwells here,
twin demilunes, tight and perfect
to light a yoni. For reflect,
Lord, a flame must burn both blue and golden.
Thirst requited is key to coitus,
more so if the desired effect
is healthy sons, lust loaming
the womb, attest our midwives. Men must bring,
not just seek the pinnacle. So, rouse my
seed. Set hands and tongue roaming
now. And then, it’ll be gloaming
again and again, the blessed moment when night
and day merge to stain skies in many-hued delight.
Continue, Lord. Unfurl my petals, taste
and quaff, trace and stroke the whorls till they come
alive, enflame, throb and bloom to complete this rite
that spring enjoins. Penetrate, then thrust. Thrust. Succumb
to the pain, explode future selves, lose your being.
But do not lose me, for it isn’t over yet.
Not till I surge and pound and flood, till I become,
yes, come. Come, let us flow away in the Jhelum,
the night or the Milky Way, you plead, leave the land,
this world – how dear, how absurd are lovers’ demands
in bliss, even those of ascetics. I came, Lord, in aid
of a distressed lass. I came to bear a wise, robust child
for this clan. Ever afters, you must understand,
are not for maids. Nor life, should the queen wish to flay
defiance in its bud. You’ll forget me too, though perhaps
not this night. For nothing forever remains, whether thirst
or royal norms. Even the sun must melt away.
The seasons in the valley will change too one day.
II. POORNA TO SATYAVATI: THE HANDMAIDEN’S GRAIL
No, My Queen. It wasn’t threat to life, greed, nor lust –
as the hazel, restive moon is witness – that thrust
me last night through the doors of your son’s chamber
into awkward arms, feigning – through drape or quiet –
your daughter-in-law’s frame. It was dread in vile gust,
Queen, Ambika’s dread, the ruinous, manky rains
of memory from last year’s coitus drowning her wing-
shorn, contused heart – that was my impetus. What else could I
do? Insist joy would return and, like madder stains,
stay – a little, longer, for life? Still remains,4
dregs, of conscience in my blood, coerce her – like you
did – into more couplings, with sermons on virtue,
on dues to past and future dead? No, Queen, once was once
too much. In my tongue, what you sanctioned – schemed – is defined
rape, sex under duress – its wraith will haunt the Kuru
lineage until pralaya, the last cosmic undoing,
infect land, corrode blood ties. You bid Ambika sleep with her
husband’s brother – Bheeshma, she believed – then sent an unknown,
ungentle other to plough her womb. Unhealing, unseeing
wounds from sharp crimes your lips still bear traces of. My being,
my sight, my tongue outrage my Queen, yet the truth will not change
with silence nor the slow, heinous death you long to arrange
for me and mine. Besides, you’d lose the sole robust, righteous
child this clan will beget – yes, Vyaasa
confirmed our son will soon
half-moon my breast: the grail, was it not, for the whole deranged
crusade of forced intercourse? But why, Queen, why benight
so many lives – pallid stepson, despoiled broken daughters, now
a line of damaged heirs? Why cinder youth and faith and love?
Why pine to thwart Time’s flight? Why seek the Sun’s birthright?
Why care if dawn’s colours suffuse the face of night?
Insolence, I swear, was not my intent. Maids seldom spare
kinship for rulers, but I’ve, for years, spelt your name as prayer,
worn the thought of you as amulet, as peerless gem: fisher-
girl who rose to queen, Nishada-empress of our realm. And I
am not alone – you stood unfaltering, a lucent flare
through eclipse, gloom and storm, dwarfing a caste-ridden regime.
For servants, weavers, peasants…our bodies became our state, no
lord’s fief no more; your reign unbent our spine, lent us earth and air.
Don’t get me wrong – gratitude abides, so does esteem.
Our world still survives within waning dreams,
but waking hours birth whispers. Why and when does a saviour –
you were no less, damn our innocence – to one turn traitor,
Until the Lions Page 7