Until the Lions
Page 9
When the king decides to take
you, there is nowhere to run.
The land is his, the rivers are his5 – the sky
too, the birds dwelling there bemoan.
When the king decides to take
you, there is nowhere to hide, with earth
and heaven and hell his turf.
When the king decides to take you,
no one comes to the rescue: the gods
are his, myth and legend,
too, his own.
When the king decides to take you, there is much pomp to mark the beginning though not the end. This time, the day and hour must be right, for he must have a child, not just slake his lust. He has waited two years for his pregnant wife to give birth, and he can wait no more. He must have a child, a son, before his brother becomes a father – it is the single goal in his sightless eyes, and so, even a son by a dasi will do. He cannot, this time, grab and ravish you on any given day or night, like nameless, faceless others were ravished in the past: this time, he must be sure his seed is planted right, warn the priests. You have been chosen, iterate the eyes in chorus, from all the virgins in the land – for this time, he will not take the risk of fallow maidens who waste his spore. The priests have named you the most blessed, most fertile of wombs in the kingdom. So you shall bear the king’s infant. Then the eyes grow hands, grow a colony of hands – cold as corpses, swift and sure as cords – to bathe and bedeck, to deck you to be worthy of their king, to perfume your tresses, your wrists, your waist and pastures further south, to rub musk into every inch of skin till you glow with fragrance, with flavour. Anointed, with gold and ghee and sandal. Like a steed for sacrifice, you think, like the prize stallion at an ashwamedha yagna, but for the year of unfettered wandering the equine is first allowed and you are not. But for the pieces of the dead steed offered to the gods, you think, for you cannot be shared: no, all of you must be saved for the king to consume, from navel to nipple to eyelid, insole to clitoris. And to keep you fecund and faithful, to help you stay focussed and fictile, the eyes dilate, your kin – father, brothers, sister-in-law and niece – will be guests of the court, kept in high comfort, though within closed doors. Just in case you forget
When the king decides to take
you, there is nowhere to run.
The land is his, the rivers are his – the sky
too, the birds dwelling there bemoan.
When the king decides to take
you, there is nowhere to hide, with earth
and heaven and hell his turf.
When the king decides to take you,
no one comes to the rescue: the gods
are his, myth and legend,
too, his own.
When the king decides to (it is time: say it, say it, say the word, a voice resounds in my head. Not yet, though. For a word is more than a word, and before it shrapnels my child’s ears, he must know its shape and colour, its texture, its smell. So he can hold it, so he can wield it.)
When the king decides to take you, the contours of your life dissolve. You move within a cage of eyes; the unkindness of eyes that define every action, surround you from daybreak to daybreak, from plunder to cleansing to respite to plunder again. Your deflowering, too, is a public act; the bedchamber is not naked nor is the king; only you are. Your deflowering – accompanied by priestly chanting and conch shells – unfolds in three long acts of lunge, grind, rip. The lunge of a Himalayan thing that blots out the night, ferrous hands and knees that unhinge limbs, prying open arms and thighs, no flesh or thought, all metal and sweat and rush. The grind of chest against belly, the grind of seedbags on sepals, the grinding of a back into gravel against silken sheets that singe skin and memory. Rip, the fine robes you were made to wear. Rip, the fragrance of young lips. Rip, softness from both breasts. Rip, the muslin of a heart hidden between two hips, its whorls fluid and dark and furious. Darkness bellows and overflows, till you feel no more. But you wake, all too soon, and when you wake, the king has recommenced, so have the prayers. At first, you know no anger, no fear, only pain that permeates, from skin to marrow. Your spine is bent, bone after bone, with the weight of a tungsten sky. Your breasts have aged, the nipples turned to rust. Mouth and tongue swell into rubble and dust. Your back and neck bear the hieroglyphics of talons: deep and live and rubescent, the kingdom’s untold history. Your belly is a molten, screaming pit that cannot be hushed.
When the king decides to rape you, no one will use the word rape. The word does not exist in the king’s world. Your body is just another province he owns, from navel to nipple to eyelid, insole to clitoris. And it is not over yet. Time moves from night to night, from one coupling to the next. For you are to be pounded till you procreate. Each night, he comes to peel then split you open like a tangerine, suck dry then discard all thought of you except the seed. Each night, you must try to be pliant – for a king’s displeased voice can sever heads. Each night, you curse the queen whose unending incubation has forced you to her husband’s bed. Each night, you pity the queen whose husband knows no tenderness, no love in his loins save for a son and heir. Each night. Till the day the priests announce you are child-bound, and the delicate state removes you from the king’s chambers. For nine months, you are precious, the bight of your belly the altar at which the eyes, the unkindness of eyes, dance and bow. Then, one day, you are not. Your son has dehisced: a slash of earth – red, ripe and viscous – that swims out from the sea above your legs. And the queen’s hundred sons burst forth from their capsules. The dearth of infants is over. Court and kingdom rejoice. Court and kingdom expel you and your kin to the outer boundaries of the land, with a fistful of gold to keep you well away from your son. But you return. You return, again and again, until the queen, who fears your being, promises the child can visit you, so you will not cast a shadow on her realm. So you wait, you wait for the day he will make that journey to your hut, to your heart. Each day, you wait, with tireless gaze scorching the path to your hut. Each day, you clean the bare insides of your home till they gleam in pain. Each day, you repeat the story you will tell your son, even as you hear the distant chant of the unkindness of eyes.
When the king decides to take
you, there is nowhere to run.
The land is his, the rivers are his – the sky
too, the birds dwelling there bemoan.
When the king decides to take
you, there is nowhere to hide, with earth
and heaven and hell his turf.
When the king decides to take you,
no one comes to the rescue: the gods
are his, myth and legend,
too, his own.
III.
When the king decides to rape me or my kind, no one will use the word rape. The word does not exist in the king’s world. This body is just another province he owns, from navel to nipple to eyelid, insole to clitoris.
But even the king cannot own a thought, nor a conscience – nobody can. This, I tell myself, night and day, Child, even today. It is the amulet that kept me sane through my time in the palace; it is the amulet I will tie on your wrist when you arrive, my real bequest. When the time comes, Child, you can unwrite the end of this tale, unravel the letters, invent a new script. For truth can crawl out of slush, shed gravity and soar. And, for one night, remember, ants too can take wing – that is a choice you will have as well.
GANDHARI
THE DEADLINESS OF BROKEN THINGS
If only they’d killed you when you were still a child,
my brother, my almost-son. There are times I think
I have been walking with your grave these many years.
Were you not the only being to know my name,
Shakuni, my brother, I think all my sons could
still live long and prosper, though Kuru would then bloom.
But you’d known my being, my name,
my true name: not
Gandhari, the dead suffix to land I’ve become.
So I prayed you’d live long, prosper – and doom Kurus
who’d slain and drawn Father, our brothers, then quartered
Gandhar to dead, annexed land. You’ve become that day
of ruin: you came undone – the sun torn from its seams,
when our kin, our earth and skies were drawn and quartered
at Bheeshma’s hands. They owned our eyes: the shattered skulls,
the torn lungs, arms ruined and legs undone, the sons crushed
in live wombs; and eyes, eyes all over, unfurled, gouged,
handless, shattered; eyes that clamoured for Bheeshma’s skull
in single, splattered tongue and never left our heads.
Eyes haunted my womb and unfurled our hearts to gouge
lost names – what else could they do? We’re their last refuge.
By Father’s splattered head, in gashed tongue, I swore not
to glimpse the world again. Eyes I bound in revenge –
blindness was my last refuge. What could Bheeshma do,
save praise his blind nephew’s captive bride and name my
bound, vengeful eyes love’s crown? Eyes the world glimpsed again
no more: none had seen the sun in my twilight gaze
save you, captive kin of blind Dhritarashtra’s bride –
a wounded, brooding child who would scarce walk or speak.
You were the sun at midnight: my last gaze, no more
sights would breach the silk band on my eyes, nor my heart
that spoke only to this child whose wounds walked barefoot
to hell, loath to heal. While I, I was filled with night:
lone sight to breach silk-banded eyes. Night sang in heart
and vein, night played bass at my forced wedding, my wake.
I’d dance with my loathed spouse to hell, unhealing night
by our side: this I swore. No love, no ruth flowed through
my veins for the prince I was forced to wed, whose wake
had engulfed my name, my kin, my land – my whole world.
Ruthless though my oath, the flow of selfless love swore
and sang the bards: I became the wife who’d renounced
sight, kin, land – her whole world – to gulf the unnamed tides
that trapped her man, to share his tragic lot. Kingdom
and clan sang with the bards: renouncer wives became
high fashion – with other Kuru brides made to match
my tragic lot. King Pandu’s two queens had to share
exile from crown and coupling, then gift themselves to
others – Kuru-fashion – so their bridegroom could match
his forefathers in fruit. If I could, I’d have picked
exile from coition, a real gift when crowned
my husband’s spouse: thrust, grind, rip – brutal, the nightly
forays in his thirst for fruit, his need to father
kings, to beat his kid brother to that coveted
spot. My spouse whose brutal nights ripped more maidenheads
while my belly rounded with his seed’s lifetime – slow
beating, such birthing of kings. Covetous, Brother,
and quiet were your hands, as they settled their eyes
on my round belly, slowed with Dhritarashtra’s seed.
Then came the infants, all hundred and one, restored
by Vyaasa’s quiet hands; settled, all, with hale eyes –
softly, I thanked gods I had disowned for a while.
All hundred and one, my infants, come to restore –
bit by unsought bit – hope, warmth, care: stars for my night,
soft gifts from gods I tried not to own, at first, while
battling madly for their lives, mainly the eldest’s.
The stars presaged he’d benight the earth: drain hope, warmth
and goodness from our land. A demon reborn who’d
battle all his life; our eldest, mad with greed, would
tear the age apart, so Vidur and Vyaasa said.
Demons, once born, must be slain, for the good of land
and race, they urged. Kill the child, they urged. Kill him now,
save our age, so Vidur and Vyaasa said. Untorn,
for once, my husband and I were firm in response:
This child won’t be killed. Not for race, nor earth. Now urge
no further. Cherish Suyodhan as our crown prince.
Just once more would I hear my husband respond – firm,
regal – thus. By then, he’d be moving to the swirl
of your words – prized, by crown and prince (even further
under your spell) heedless of other counsel, both
right and regal. Every word, thus, a designed move,
the arabesque of a sword seeking to avenge
through heedful counsel all our other kin, to spell
an end to Kuru. At ten – broken-hearted, maimed,
you’d sought to slay their sun, and venge the arabesques
of voices stilled in Gandhar. While I, who’d tried gloom
and noon to drown my maimed heart and break the Kuru
reign, now find it flaming blue-black by dusk again,
stoked by gladness, stilled since Gandhar. But I’d tried in
vain. Love kindles constellations on my moonless
vault; its reign flames, blue-gold through dusk and newfound dawn.
It didn’t happen overnight, Brother. After
vain, long moons could my sons kindle and constellate
fresh memories for me, atolls of the present.
But you, Brother, night after night, you happen – steeped
in hate. Revenge is the sole land you’ll populate.
Your present – future memories tolling defeat
and serfage – to Suyodhan feeds him distrust, greed
and hate, revenge for land he cannot populate.
I’ve begged you to desist: not to make murderers
of my sons; Suyodhan serf to distrust and greed.
Why destroy them when Bheeshma and Dhritarashtra
are our foes, I begged. Desist from the cold murder
of innocents, whether Pandav or Kaurav, I
begged. Grief alone destroys Bheeshma, Dhritarashtra
and their kind, you replied, unforgiving as Time.
There are no innocents, Pandav or Kaurav, you
replied, in this world save the unborn. Only fools
forgive, for men are crueller than Time. Kindness
is wasted on Kuru, where fathers leach sons’ lives,
you replied, in a world where fools are born as kings.
All of you gleams murder: your eyes are spears; your mouth,
a dagger. The perfect son, you’ll waste Kuru lives –
your words a silver sabre. You are a death Death
would die to kiss: murderous mouth and gleaming eyes,
skin glinting vitreous. There is no stopping you,
your words spell slow death, death from a broken sabre.
Death propelled, impartially, at your sons and mine –
you’ll not stop with others’ kin, vitreous the glint
of wrath and loathing that keeps you breathing. But how
can the Kuru stay impartial to death propelled,
unmindful of your lethal, silk tongue? Suyodhan,
clothed in loathing, breathes only wrath; Dhritarashtra
drowns in woe – they deem all your doomsday ploys the truth.
No one disarms your lethal mind, your silken web
of lies,
not Bheeshma, not the court. Even Krishna
never deploys the truth to drown your doomsday plots.
I asked Kunti, once, to step in, to save her sons
from lies, to goad Bheeshma and the court or Krishna
to see sense: she preferred Kuru sectioned, with her
sons lords of a wasteland, than to step back here, save
as kings, she said. They’d barely survived death by fire:
this time, she preferred safety to sense, to section
their life well away from Hastina. That was when
I knew we’d not survive. Kingship – not dearth, not fire –
and you would be our nemesis. The king pronounced
a life away from Hastina – Indraprastha,
new kingdom on barren land – for the five Pandav:
the pronouncement of nemesis, the king does not
see, but then he never did. For I know, distance
from the Pandav will not turn barren the kingdom
of my son’s greed. And you’ll not rest till haemic light –