while earth blossoms, ripe and eager
underfoot. The rivers return,
younger, tamer, with a sky tender
to the touch. Alongside jasmine and rose
and magnolia, hope spreads
in seven shades. Birdsong lights
the ears, no more cold, silent dread.
For Hidimba is dead. Relief
washes me like rain. Brother he was, but
only in name. I lived in fear for my being,
that you know well, not unlike
the wild boar and gazelle, nishadas,
rakshasas, even gandharvas who throng
these woods. If famished, he would
have supped on his sister’s flesh, and swigged
this blood. Life had become a constant hunt – I spent
my hours like a hound, chasing
and killing, skinning beasts to slake
such an endless thirst, could only scramble
after pelt and bone, suck
their remains once he was done.
It would end, I had always thought,
some day soon, but not
this way: I hadn’t hoped to survive
my monstrous sibling.
For one day, they appeared,
Kirmira, six majestic orchids amongst
ruderals: a woman with five men, bipeds
in the guise of gods or kinnaras.
We caught sandal and musk, rose,
heliotrope in the air from their hide.
Hidimba rose and sank
with new appetite, bid me
to seize the whole unseen lot,
to prepare this unseasonal
feast of human flesh. I had killed
men before, though I didn’t care
too much for their brawn – too
pallid, too fat, too cloyingly sweet.
But who’d defy Hidimba and risk
their tongue? Off I loped
to gather the prey from a nearby
copse, five recumbent figures at the feet
of a – oh! My sweet breath, I saw –
a demigod. I drank in the landscape
of his shoulders, his arms, his neck,
the acreage in his chest, the peak
between his legs and I was struck –
struck instantly, insatiably by lust; struck
hard enough
to make me want
to save their lives.
For you know, Kirmira, I can
morph into earth, into insect, into ocean,
crone, enchantress. I could have transformed
into a goddess to entice him – but
I didn’t need to (Never mind the lore –
as often, it lies). Instead, I begged to carry him far
away, away from Hidimba’s fangs
and belly. I begged to hide him in the wind,
amidst rivulets, begged this man – Bheema,
Son of Pandu, once a prince
of the Kuru lands, he introduced himself –
to flee but he would not wake his sleeping family,
their rest he priced more
than a kingdom, he said. And at that,
Hidimba arrived, a tempest of teeth and claws
and fury, aiming to slice me
for having tarried with the quarry.
He didn’t understand, my brother for whom all
life was meat (a future meal,
at worst), how desire could swallow
fear, snap that slender tendon of consanguinity.
But he never reached
my skin – Bheema stepped
into his path, toppled him as earthquakes
upend mountains. They grappled
and girned, loud enough to rouse volcanoes,
dry up oceans – loud enough to wake the Pandu
sons, who leapt up with supernal
arms. But, it was over before they could
dilute the duel – Bheema picked Hidimba
by the hind, and rent him
from head to penis, like a
voiceless, powerless stalk.
For Bheema did not fight
to save me: I would not have
loved him if he had. He battled –
as always – to protect his clan.
The rest, Kirmira, was swift – I
cannot lie, I did not regret my brother’s
demise, nobody in this forest
did. I declared my love, in words
clear and steady. Bheema declined
my hand at first, though his eyes
signalled ample interest. He called me
rakshasi, demon-sorceress. Their mother
intervened, Phir bhi yeh naari hai,6
she reminded: nonetheless, she is – and
above all – a woman. We were wedded
with her blessings that very day.
(ii)
I knew this night had to leave one day.
A tawny moon would walk off with you
and yours, Bheema, as my blood flowed grey:
I knew this. Night has to leave one day
for battle – and you must lead the way,
you, the clan’s dagger, their flame, this too
I know. But don’t leave tonight. One day,
soon, the new moon can walk off with you.
(iii)
I returned him, Kirmira,
returned him to the Pandavas,
a year and four months later, returned all
of Bheema, or almost. His broad,
straight back, eloquent only in lust. Eyes
unfurrowed, sprightly with daybreak. The smile
that lights him, down to
the fingertips. Both legs, planted wide –
sturdy as the unseen roots of mountains – or
right-angled for chase.
Arms unquiet, even when at rest.
Branches of ribs that would blossom
around my breasts. The doubt,
the sorrow, the lurking unworth
of second-born, never best, thrumming
in his blood. Then his lungs,
which had soared on love’s fragrance.
A full-throated delight in the shimmer,
the heights of my unvanquished
world – her endless oceans, her orotund
wilds, the earthly summits and celestial designs,
trees that deliquesce in moonlight:
the sounds, the smells, the sights I unveiled
dawn, noon and early dark for four months and
a year (his family, strange, irrational
beings, never let him stay full nights
with me – they feared a rakshasi’s power
would turn him into plaything
if he spent all four prahars by her side).
All I kept are shorn filaments from both
hearts, intertwined and grown
into trust. And a son, who, anyway,
would be mine. Bheema’s family had no use
for children until they turned
harvestable: biddable, weddable,
or expendable, machines of war.
I gave him hunt and forage
as parting gifts, Kirmira: never would
Bheema hunger in the wilds again, nor his clan.
I taught him smell. The odour
of roe and rabbit, of morel and toadstool,
the distant hint of petrichor. Scents of chestnut,
of resin, of wild elephant
in rut. Venom in half-bloom on
ner
vous, beckoning petals. The nidor
in enemy sweat, the mute
smell of death. Taught him
touch. Taught him to read tales
of a royal courtship from lion’s
spoor, to relive the songs of centuries
with fingers on the whorls of a murdered
tree. Taught him speed, then
accuracy. And mercy, to kill
rapidly, without leisure or display.
Kill, for need and not
for pleasure. Enough
and never any more.
We rakshasas labelled
bloodthirsty, savage, take fewer
lives than royals, I proved, time after
time. (Except the odd
fiend like Hidimba, who gave
our race a bad name.) And Bheema
learnt, learnt quick and well.
Like a child unpraised all his days,
he basked in my urging, my applause.
I never called him
dense, nor thick-headed,
never dismissed his thoughts –
tried, silently, to erode
a lifetime of blithe hurt his brothers
had gifted, the reward humans so easily
inflict on slower kin. Confidence
my final offering, a lasting dowry.
So then they left. Left in pursuit
of justice, life and the greater
glory they believed was theirs
from birth. The woman and five men,
all hers to command.
Yuddhishtira, the righteous,
their future king, who’d quoted
scriptures to endorse my rights
to Bheema when he’d seemed
unwilling to wed (demurral, I learnt
later, my husband’s tested
ploy to secure elder approval).
Bheema, next, cannier by far than
his brothers inferred, but gentle,
wistful, and more loyal than anyone
deserved. The balletic Arjuna, sharp yet
unsure (for all that self-love)
beneath his archer’s aegis – a man
in need of a word, or a god, though
he knew it not. With Nakula
and Sahadeva, dissimilar twins,
still callow, still unfinished, blurred
composites of the older siblings.
All satellites, Kirmira, orbiting
their mother Kunti, the heliacal force.
I watched them leave, relief –
I must admit – in king tide
submerging both love’s ache
and vinculum. I have a forest
to rule, Kirmira, with land more
vast, more populous than Hastina –
though scarce visible
to my in-laws’ eyes, now
urbanite – and a child to raise
as earthling, as chieftain.
And the Pandavas, I had come
to see, required too often too much.
Besides they could help
with neither task: these men
were to remain sons, at best brothers –
they could seldom grow
into husbands, and never
fathers. Their own kingship,
I can foretell, will be steered
by possession, loss and carnage,
death tolls the pennant for success.
No, it was best to bid them adieu,
though it isn’t quite that – some ties
stay unsevered, even when tattered.
(iv)
I am writing to you from tomorrow,
Queen, Mother, land of stippled delights where
summer dances in my son’s eyes, they glow
farther than the Karthigai.7 The echo
of that light swathes earth, scours the solitaire
I am. Writing to you from tomorrow,
I fret: can we keep him from the shadow
his fathers will throw? Find Forever’s lair
before summer’s dance ends? My son’s eyes glow
just like yours, while his laughter – full and slow –
is all Bheem. Of this first grandchild, your heir,
I’ll keep writing to you. From tomorrow
he’ll learn to transform: become fire, arrow,
dragon – swift and dire; for vast power, snare
summer, and dance in the sun’s eyes – their glow
will fill his veins. Whom the gods thus bestow,
they also erase – it’s this torment’s glare
I am writing to you from. Tomorrow,
though, summer dances: my son’s eyes will glow.
(v)
Summer has left
our eyes, Kirmira.
Autumn bestrides
the earth, bestrides my skin,
blazing miles of chinar and memories.
Blood – or vermilion, I cannot say which –
smudges night, its clutter
of stars, and a sightless,
stumbling moon. Death has
returned, further south,
with a maiden and five
weddings: it is Kunti
who tells me so. We write,
yes, the queen-mother and I,
we write and share, trading imprints
the other will not see –
she of her son, often sons;
I of mine. Of kingship, conquests
and queens. The history of
the hunt. Stories of hunter and
hunted no poet-sages nor scribes
seem to sing. I am sorry,
Kirmira, yes, you heard right:
Bakasura was slain, in the jungles
of Ekachakra. His belly slathered
on the forest floor, limbs sliced and
diced and doused in gore, eyes plucked
out, head skewered
on a branch of sal. My spies
sent home that very headline. Yet
another rakshasa king,
you mourn. Yes, one more
rakshasa, and one more brother,
estranged though you both
remained. Brother and ruler
but cannibal and cruel, he had – you
agree – dived headfirst to hell,
and dragged his world with him,
lower still: a wilder, fouler despot
than Hidimba himself, feasting
on his own people week after week,
for years. Bheema slew him, the excrescence.
I do not blame him, not for that
act of expunction. There is no real
solution for the Baka of this earth.
But the relish in the kill;
the gleeful, long dismembering;
this defiling of spent flesh – that spells
a new Bheem, one who kills
not like warrior nor beast but man,
one I had never quite seen.
It was hunger, insisted
Kunti. The hunger that walked
with the brahmin guise they had
to don in the hamlet,
Ekachakra, feeding off alms
from kindly strangers, or poor
neighbours. Yes, I thought,
hunger, or the fury that kept
spiralling in his gut, eyes unblinking,
tongue manacled. The villagers did
not feel my fear: they jubilated, fêting
Bheem’s victory, the revelry spreading far
and deep, alongside tales of a nameless,
matchless brahmin lad, saviour of the suffering
masses, till the Pandavas – dreading fame, discovery –
fled silently one night, south
to Kampilya, heart of Panchala,
straight into the arms of their dazzling,
deadly future: twin pairs
of arms. First, a consort, Draupadi,
dredged from the bowels of earth and fire
by a vengeful parent,
by artful deities. Draupadi,
goddess of tenebrous flame,
the reward Arjuna received
from Drupada, Panchala’s king,
for striking the eye of a spinning,
wooden carp, strung high up
above the heads of royal suitors
gathered to win her jewelled hand.
(Yes, Kirmira, that’s how humans
pick husbands for their daughters and
name it swayamvara, the bride’s own choice.)
Draupadi, thus gained by Arjuna,
both saved by Bheema from hordes
of petulant rulers and princes. Draupadi,
then divided between five
brothers as bride, to heed Kunti’s
behest, Share and share alike, all alms,
all earnings, today as always.
Draupadi, who will have
to offer, then, heart and hymen,
over and over, to five
men she never chose (nor,
really, did the lifeless fish that
defined her lot), all
for a mother’s word to stay
true. When questioned, Kunti
wrote to me, One queen
to bind them all: that, my sons
will always need, and it must now
be one other than me.
And with Draupadi
comes Krishna as dowry:
Krishna, their secret arm,
king-maker, counsellor, chief Yadava,
lord of the cow-herder tribes, controller –
I begin to hear – of the land’s
destiny. Stay well away, Kirmira, from
Krishna’s gaze. The Yadava bodes well
for neither forests
nor forest-dwellers like us.
He lobs winter with four hands.
DUSSHALA
LANDAY FOR DOOMED SIBLINGS
We’re all dying, less or more broken.
The sages say this is what it means to be human.
To be human, like runes on parchment:
to fade, to tear, to melt – and, sometimes, to be unmeant.
Unmeant blob of flesh, last orison –
I am both: lone daughter, postscript to a hundred sons.
The hundred sons, loved, beloved, all
Until the Lions Page 11