Until the Lions

by Karthika Nair

  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