Until the Lions

by Karthika Nair

  Or take Gandhari, whose wounds throb and bleed as unending righteousness, sainthood more virulent than any wickedness. Except the malignance of her brother, Shakuni, orphaned by Kuru forces and forced to watch a blind man wed his sister. Shakuni, who has sown – with quiet success – fear, distrust and wrath in Dhritarashtra’s once loving heart. Shakuni, who will soon blueprint his hate onto his eldest nephew Suyodhana’s being, will fill the boy’s thoughts and deeds with venom to devastate this land. Then Kunti, with a hate birthed by that needless second wife Bheeshma bought to dispel the true rumours of Pandu’s impotence. A hate alchemised into impermeable, unbending love for all five children, love that will impede all other love and light from reaching them, leaving wives and sons and lovers wounded by the wayside. You talk of values, Mother, of training their sights away from evil. But their future preceptor, Drona, their idol, their ideal, Drona, is a man honeycombed by hate – by his hostility to Dhrupad, the childhood playmate who wronged him grievously in later life. It shouldn’t matter to us, Mother. But it will, for all his lessons, his guidance – on archery or governance, statecraft or gnosis – will be fuelled by this hate. And hate is the guru dakshina he will exact from his students: he will demand they subjugate Dhrupad and annexe Panchaal. A hate that will spawn more hate, for Dhrupad will then seek, and obtain, vengeance from heaven – this is a spiral that just will not abate. How can you combat these many legions of hate, Mother?

  Listen. Strips of thought glided and spooled in my head, thoughts that spiralled, thoughts that undid me even as he spoke. I could hear truth, many-armed, cruel-tongued, singing through Vyaasa’s voice, truth that would not be interred. But why, I asked in despair, could he not obviate the course of history with all his astral powers, why did he not erase this hate with his pen that shapes the story? My son’s voice was suffused with the fatigue of enlightenment. Mother, I cannot invent the story. The story invented itself, invented you and me. I can merely act as channel, as implement. I am assigned to circulate the epic in the world but I could not change a time of birth or the placement of a line if I tried: to obliterate or dilute this explosion of kinetic hate is beyond my ken. It haunts me night and day, blessed by celestial insight though I am. Illumination and wisdom do not always bring detachment. I miss my earlier, imperious self, Mother: half-knowledge brought such certainty. I am sick of knowing, of seeing so much – it makes me unsure, almost tremulous.

  You, Mother, are fraught since you had those visions – and you did not even know what they all meant. I do. Even as I moulded the many fragments of Gandhari’s womb, I could see – ô, with blinding clarity – the fate of each of those children. Bright Vikarna, wise Dusshala, brave Suyodhana…I could see their blood-soaked destinies as though they were already legend. I see all the time, for it must be written, and each vision scars my mind, leaves nerves and muscles mangled. I see Kunti’s return to Hastina with her five sons, the terror Shakuni will then stoke in Dhritarashtra’s sightless heart, and worse, in Suyodhana’s sighted one. I see young Bheema break his cousins’ bones as recreation, torment them generously through each waking moment. I see their wounds swell and fester with new hate. I see Duryodhan – for Suyodhana’s hate will colour him with malevolence and bequeath on him this new, vicious name – poison Bheema’s plate with nightshade, bind the senseless boy with his own raiment and tip him into the Ganga to die. I see Arjuna and his brothers – arrogant in their kshatriya breeding, intolerant of lesser-born beings – ridicule brilliant, noble Karna for his suta blood before the eyes of all Hastinapur.

  I see the birth of more hate, hate distilled from injustice, hate between brothers, for Karna is Kunti’s son from the Sun God, born well before she wedded Pandu – though Kunti alone knows the secret of his bloodline and she will not tell her other sons, silence that will engender a lifetime of obdurate, vicious dislike. I see Shakuni and Duryodhan plot to kill the Pandava clan, to burn them alive in a lac palace far away from home. I see, too, Kunti place six Nishada innocents in their stead as victims – the lives, yes, of lesser-born men will never count for our descendants. You and I too, Mother, would also be lesser-born beings in Pandava eyes, the thought often crosses my mind. I see much that falls on my vision as a rain of flame. I see Draupadi – luminous, fiery Draupadi, our cherished bride – near disrobed in Hastina’s royal assembly; I see her stand, breasts blushing, blood racing from her thighs to hide within the earth while her husbands look on, impuissant. I see her curse – lethal, resonant – brand every ogling Kuru male in court; I see the words strike and truncate their lifelines, forked lightning once again. I see more. I see valiant Bheeshma suddenly turn corporeal, I see him transpierced by a bed of arrows, blood – in just-awakened glee – rushing across a marmoreal chest, fresh scars puckering lips on arms and legs. I see battalions of men and horses and elephants destroyed by single astras, entire families sent spinning into the void. I see the young die, mutilated, before tasting the colours of life.

  But war is sometimes not the worst event, Mother: it just magnifies the evil men commit at other times. I see love discarded, over and over, by the Pandavas – discarded thoughtlessly and retrieved only for functionality. The love of good women – a palimpsest, the list of names long: Hidimbi, Bheema’s wife, the eldest Pandava bride; Ulupi and Chitrangada, queens both, whom Arjuna meets and forgets after nights of passion and procreation. And their many official wives, none allowed to accompany the Pandavas – not in exile, nor to heaven. All except Draupadi, who will be paid for her constancy with her husbands’ desertion both in dishonour and in death. And so much worse are the rewards to be meted on their sons, Mother. Ghatotkacha – the Pandava firstborn, half-rakshasa, half-human, Bheema’s son from Hidimbi, forgotten until the land of adversity – will be deployed as shield to deflect the astra Karna sends to slay Arjuna. Or Aravan, Arjuna’s son from Ulupi, who will be asked by his fathers to kill himself – human sacrifice to Kali – to ensure Pandava victory. Even Abhimanyu, the jewel in the Pandava crown, will die in his uncles’ stead, though this murder, at least, will not be intended. What kind of progeny do we spawn, Mother? I have no answers, though write all this, every account of thought and action, intent and reaction, I must. For I am made up of letters: my skeleton, musculature and blood. The skin, the skin is pure memory – of past and future – and I would erase it if I could. But I cannot, for write I must. Come away with me, Mother. Come away now. There is no more you can do for this land, this clan.

  Listen. Listen, the night was damp with unspilled blood, the sky hung low, clouds of unshed tears dragging it to earth. I could sense the impending meltdown of this world; I could hear its funeral rites behind the frenzied symphony now ringing in my ears for three months, a week and two nights. I could hear the birth of mayhem, feel its atavistic pulse and I knew everything my son described was about to happen, had already begun – some in other lands, near and distant. It was time to leave. But there remained one last rite to be performed. I will come, I said to Vyaasa, but first I must bid good-bye to Bheeshma, noblest of adversaries, steadiest of allies. Mine is an act of abandonment, even though you state otherwise: for Bheeshma is a man who does not understand – nor recognise – hate, although there is much he, too, generates. I do, I grew up wearing hate’s mantle for many years, though I learnt to shed that carapace a long while ago. Bheeshma will be helpless before its viscous, implacable flow. Let me warn him before I go. There was much I had to tell him. Bheeshma, my stepson, my companion, would have to learn – and learn fast – about old hate, descended from heavens, leavened on this land. Old hate, diffused through blood and womb and semen. Old hate that I too begat, old hate bequeathed and bartered, won in battle, given as bride-price, hate that would blight at least six generations of this clan, deforming husbands, grandsons, aunts and nephews, brides and celibates, hate that scarred every soul, even this baseborn sainted bard. Vyaasa, my lone living son Vyaasa, who had been given the words to hymn this story across millennia while birth and d
eath and love and youth would jostle for place, while hate, old hate, would spore and multiply.

  For Kurukshetra

  is a ploy: men can create

  mayhem in heaven.

  UTTARAA

  I. LIFE SENTENCES

  The sky will not be sky again. It is dead

  skin split open, drained of all music and blood.

  Monarchs, ministers, nations, elders, fathers:

  it will not be the same, the world you now own.

  This I promise. You will never hear day break

  into mute lucent song, never taste colour

  again. Slivers of our trust will discolour

  your waking hours; the screaming eyes of my dead,

  all eight million, will plunder sleep; their broken

  dreams – aged sixteen, lusty, loud – dance in bloodied

  feet at the Council of Kings, dance ownership

  of your crown. But, dharma, you state, must father

  martyrs to save planets. Why then, Our Father

  Who Stays Alive, why bring us new, colourful

  balloons – faith, hope, freedom? Why brand us your own,

  made in your image? What we are is deadly

  disposable spawn, born benign (not bloodless,

  imperfectly designed) then programmed to break

  enemy battalions, smash unbreakable

  armoured discs and self-combust for fatherly

  glory. Yes, your dharma is a bloodthirsty

  beast, a god decked in the primary colours

  of dystopia: rusty, fetid, undead.

  Rulers in righteous armour, you will not own

  to filicide, nor bare the hands that disowned

  your scions in their last hours. I must now break

  away from your empire, shed this deadening

  white guilt, end all myths on you, Founding Fathers,

  and speak, speak, speak till memory brings colour

  back to earth’s cheek and she rises, sparing blood

  in torrents. But hate, once seeped into bloodstreams,

  is an abiding love: it already owns

  today and tomorrow. Revenge will colour

  our future in shadows and ancient heartbreak,

  the terminal kind, for mothers and fathers.

  And I, for all my foresight, will count the dead

  again with deadpan voice and bloodstained fingers;

  will seek father figures for my sons to own,

  ones who teach them to break and decolour life.

  II. TO ABHIMANYU: MEMORABILIA

  I have so little to keep, to hold, of you,

  they mourn, your kith and mine. True and untrue,

  I should say, for memories run in my veins,

  the dreams I dream are yours that spilled and stained

  shared silken quilts and nights like auroral dew.

  And when the taste of your tongue – nutmeg brewed

  with lust – still teases my mouth, when your heart through

  my beat does echo yet, this last terrain

  I have. So little

  it seems to those who never drowned in the blue-

  black sludge of grief and rage, who never knew

  this fetid pain, nor pursued ghosts to stay sane.

  But our child within, future ghost who’ll reign

  to rage and revenge, is one more you of who

  I’ll have so little.

  III. NOTE TO THE UNBORN CHILD

  They will tell you he was a hero, child: your

  father, my husband. They will swear he lived

  a glorious death: swift and valorous, the royal

  path to heaven on gilded chariot driven by gods

  themselves. Abhimanyu: martyr, maharathi –

  ace warrior, champion archer – hailed, in awe

  and fear, as Indra, as Yama, at once lifesaver,

  demolisher, and – variously – sheet lightning,

  ancient umbra, supernova, annihilator

  of aksauhinis, elephants, evil ambition. They will

  sing of how he wrecked the padmavyuha, lotus

  phalanx of doom, defanged its deadly petals,

  smashed the spinning, hungry hub of a pistil,

  strewing armed enemy forces as so many spores

  until seven Kaurav generals – all routed in ones

  and twos – girdled him in concert like a grist

  of killer bees, stung from behind and smote

  his breath in one fell swoop.

  Choose, child, while still unborn; choose, for we

  no longer can, choose to remain free.

  His breath in one fell swoop, they will say

  that’s how it happened: blood-libation, liberation.

  But the dead have no songs, child. No melodies

  for regret or pain or pride. It is we that find and feed

  them the songs, the words, rhythm, cadence,

  refrain; we that redye the moments, each one;

  friend, foe and father, grandfather god, doting

  dowager, uncle-emperor, courtiers, seers, other

  faded maws that scurry to rework histories,

  so you will learn and hold as truth a thousand

  staves of what you never saw nor heard while nested

  in soft caul. So you will repeat what, when,

  where and why, the why, yes, why your father –

  land, pater, patria, one and many, heir to Kuru-

  Vrishni glory – vanished in this giant playground

  of carnage, of blocs, of left and right or east and west

  or wrong and right, Krishna’s right, always right

  by name and number, faith and tongue.

  Choose, child, while still unborn; choose, for we

  no longer can, choose to remain free.

  By name and number, faith and tongue, I cannot

  swear, but no path, no gilded chariots, no gods

  do I see. I see scattered your father’s brains, ruddy

  pomegranates glistening through churned slush; see

  his gaze – my husband’s gaze, the gaze that heralds

  my night, my day – transpierced, dark grapes that imprint

  earth; see traces of his smile in a torn cheek, in slivered

  jawbone; see entrails undone, crushed beneath a dozen

  armoured wheels; see bubbles of scarlet last breath

  straining – still – to rise from severed neck towards

  a cloven head: these lungs wish to live. With more speed

  and mercy did Death seize sweet Lakshmana, the cousin

  – once playmate – Abhimanyu killed: he slumps, speared

  through throat and mast. An arm lies farther, my husband’s

  or a nameless, lost limb? Too much mud, too much blood,

  too much flesh has flowed to read the palm, to know his touch

  again but this is mine, the pulse of ruby on a finger, placed

  last spring, the day our hands were interlocked.

  Choose, child, while still unborn; choose, for we

  no longer can, choose to remain free.

  Last spring, the day our lives were interlocked, bards

  from eight lands crooned of a match made in heaven.

  More lies, child, now set to music: we were made for a war

  alliance; sheer expedience, the vajra wedding

  band to join Matsya and Kuru lands, fuse our clout

  to their repute. A dowry of divine pedigree, a sea

  of cavalry, prize warriors, and a seat in royal heaven.

  For that, if need be, our kin would have married

  their children off to a banyan tree. The
se matches made

  in heaven, the bards never sing, are just tinder

  for preordained pyre. But even sticks may brush, may

  nestle, may intertwine. So it came to be: he wished

  to build, not blaze, your father, the crown prince. For some

  thing – not quite trust, nor truly love – happened, something

  like life, undesigned. The notion of future, earth’s gift

  to our sixteenth year – the first, and only, summer

  together – that swelled and curved to tempt him:

  a curled up, compact quarter-moon in me.

  Choose, child, while still unborn; choose, for we

  no longer can, choose to remain free.