are the widows of the hundred Kauravas.
Many of them lost their sons as well.”
And Sanjaya went on to itemize
every member of the royal household.
Thoroughly awestruck and well entertained,
the ascetics thanked him and took their leave.
“Where is Vidura?” asked Yudhishthira,
looking all around and not seeing him.
Dhritarashtra said, “My beloved brother
has gone further in extreme self-denial
than the rest of us. He eats only air
and no longer speaks.” Just then, Yudhishthira
caught a glimpse of Vidura in the distance
and pursued him, calling. He followed him
to a remote clearing deep in the forest
and found him standing, leaning against a tree.
He was almost unrecognizable—
filthy, skeletal, his mouth filled with stones,
his hair matted and dusty. Yudhishthira
paid him homage, and Vidura stared at him
with a luminous gaze. As he did so,
his life-breath left him and, with yogic power,
entered Yudhishthira. Each of these two men
was an aspect of the god of righteousness,
Dharma. Now they were one. Yudhishthira
felt himself increase in inner strength
and was aware of an expanded wisdom.
His mind turned to arranging the last rites
for his beloved uncle, whose lifeless body
still leaned against the tree. But then he heard
a voice from heaven say, Do not cremate
the body of this man called Vidura.
Your body is in his. Do not grieve for him;
he has gone to the regions of the blessed.
Full of wonder, Yudhishthira went back
and told Dhritarashtra what had happened.
Dhritarashtra said, “It makes me happy
to have you all around me, those I love.
My strict penances and your presence here
have consoled me. I am confident
that I shall have blessings in the afterlife.
But my mind never ceases to be tortured
by memories of the many wrongful acts
my foolish and misguided son committed.
When I think of how many brave men
died because of him, and because I
indulged his wickedness, well, then I burn
and know no peace, either by night or day.”
“My husband speaks the truth,” said Gandhari,
“and we all suffer—all who are bereaved—
even though sixteen long years have passed
since those terrible events. The worst
is wondering what has happened to them now,
all our fallen sons, brothers, husbands.”
She turned to Vyasa, who was visiting.
“O rishi, you are capable of wonders.
If you could enable us to see them
as they are now, in the afterlife,
then I think we would find peace at last.”
Vyasa said, “It is with this in view
that I have come to see you. When night falls,
if you go down and stand beside the river
you will see them rising up like swimmers
from their far dwellings in the afterlife.
They all met death as true kshatriyas;
all of them fulfilled their destiny.
Each one of your kin contained a portion
of some god or demon. They were on earth
to accomplish a celestial purpose.”
Just as, in the aftermath of the war,
Vyasa had enabled wise Gandhari,
through the gift of divine sight, to see
all that took place on the battlefield,
so, now, he granted her and Dhritarashtra
the power of vision. As the daylight faded
and the sun dipped low behind the trees,
Vyasa conjured up a miracle.
This is what Gandhari saw, speaking
silently to herself as it occurred:
“The air is growing cooler. All of us
have come to stand beside the river Ganga
and we are waiting. Time drags. No one speaks.
Slowly, the forest birds are falling silent.
Our hearts are pounding—with dread? With excitement?
How will it be? Will we know what to say?
Soon, through Vyasa’s power, Dhritarashtra
will see the sons he has never seen before!
Will he know them? I believe he will.
“The light is fading. There is mist, floating
over the water. Silence. Vyasa stands
in the shallows, erect, his lips moving.
Now, a murmur from the river, becoming
an immense rushing, a roar. Oh wonderful!
The water is churning, heaving, and the warriors
I last saw on the field of Kurukshetra,
broken and torn apart, are rising up
from the depths of the Ganga in their thousands.
“Their lovely heads and bodies are unblemished,
whole again, as when their womenfolk
gave them a last embrace before the battle.
Their graceful robes are shimmering with color
and they are all wearing auspicious jewels—
they must be gifts, blessings from the gods.
“Oh, but this sight defies the power of language
to describe! The most splendid celebration
ever seen must have been dull, compared with this.
All the different celestial realms
have yielded up their dead inhabitants
for this one night, and bitter enemies
are embracing now—Drona with Drupada,
brave Abhimanyu with Jayadratha,
Ghatotkacha with Duhshasana . . .
“Friends parted by death embrace each other—
Karna and Duryodhana, Bhishma and Drona . . .
Dhritarashtra has copious tears of joy
flowing down his cheeks, and how I tremble
with gladness to see all my beloved sons
without their hideous wounds, their faces, too,
unmarked by their suffering.
“Vyasa said
destiny had decreed these savage losses.
It is as if fate was the puppet master,
and these brave men were galloped off to war
on invisible strings, their faces lit
by foolish happiness and warrior’s pride.
Now, fate is satisfied; the gods, whose wishes
are opaque to us, have had their way
and, by the grace of Vyasa’s yogic power,
have released our heroes. For this one night,
they can again be loving, open-hearted;
they are perfected, cleansed of the human stain
of hatred.
“Now they are turning to us, our men,
and we, the living, take them in our arms
and sink in their embrace. All these widows,
whose shrieks I last heard on the battlefield,
are screaming now with joy and recognition
and something more. The Pandavas, with Kunti,
meet Karna and are reconciled with him
in perfect understanding. And now they rush
to embrace their beloved Abhimanyu,
and Uttaraa, too, is blissfully united
with the husband whose son now looks like him.
Dhritarashtra clasps Duryodhana,
as I do, and we have all passed beyond
any need for words . . .”
Dawn began to turn the treetops red.
At a gesture from Vyasa, the warriors
began to plunge into the rippling Ganga
and were gone, back to their heavenly h
omes.
Vyasa spoke. “Any widow who wishes
to join her husband in the afterlife
should quickly plunge into the holy Ganga.”
So many women, released from their bodies,
regained the companionship of marriage
in celestial worlds.
Vyasa promised
that any person, at whatever time
and in whatever place, who heard the story
of how the dead were brought back to this world
to bring joy to the living, would be changed,
consoled by it. And you have heard it now.
Having seen his sons for the first time,
and the last, Dhritarashtra shed his grief
and returned, content, to his retreat.
“My son,” he said to King Yudhishthira,
“the time has come for you to leave this place.
Through your visit, and through the miracle
summoned by Vyasa, I have achieved
perfect equanimity. I must resume
my penances without any distraction.
And the kingdom needs you.” Sahadeva
longed to stay with Kunti, sharing her life
of self-denial. “No, you must leave, my son,”
she said. “Seeing you daily, my affection
would undermine my vow of non-attachment.”
So Yudhishthira and his family,
knowing that this parting would be final,
sadly took their leave, and made their way
back to the City of the Elephant.
Two years later, Narada visited.
Eagerly, Yudhishthira asked for news
of the elders. “After you saw them last,”
said Narada, “the revered Dhritarashtra,
with his companions, moved his sacred fire
deeper into the forest. There he practiced
more severe austerities than ever,
holding only pebbles in his mouth,
not speaking, and wandering randomly
through the woods. Gandhari and Kunti
starved themselves too, and drank very little.
“One day, a forest fire sprang up, creeping
closer and closer to where the elders sat.
Sanjaya urged his master to escape,
since this fire had not been sanctified,
but Dhritarashtra refused, confident
in the power of his penances—and indeed,
he was too weak to run from the hungry fire.
Sanjaya escaped, and has made his way
to the high Himalaya. But your uncle,
Gandhari and your mother were burnt to death.
You should not grieve for them—it was their will
that they should die like this.”
The Pandavas
were heartbroken, and felt like dying themselves.
“How could the god of fire be so ungrateful,”
cried Yudhishthira, “after Arjuna
went to his aid all those years ago
in the Khandava Forest! Had he forgotten?”
“In fact,” said the seer, “this was no ordinary
inferno. The conflagration had been sparked
by the elders’ own sacrificial fire,
left carelessly unguarded by assistants—
so they died in a sacred fire, after all.”
Gradually, the wisdom of Narada
calmed the brothers’ horror and desolation.
Every apt ceremony was performed
and they spent a month living simply
outside the city walls, undergoing
purification. Then the Pandavas
re-entered Hastinapura and, grieving still,
resumed the heavy burden of government.
XVI
THE BOOK OF THE CLUBS
59.
KRISHNA’S PEOPLE
Thirty-six years after Yudhishthira
had come into his kingdom, strange portents
began to trouble him. His reign had been
largely without incident, prosperous
and peaceful. But now he felt uneasy.
Strong winds howled through the streets, scattering stones.
The great rivers flowed backwards to their source.
The sun and moon were cloaked in angry colors,
partly obscured by fog and framed in black.
Then came dreadful news: Krishna’s people,
the Vrishnis, had been violently destroyed,
killed by an iron bolt, through a curse inflicted
by outraged brahmins. It seemed that only Krishna
and his brother, Balarama, had escaped.
The Pandavas cried out in bleakest grief.
Janamejaya asked Vaishampayana,
“How could all those warriors have been killed,
slaughtered in front of Krishna’s very eyes?
I want you to explain to me in detail.”
Vaishampayana did as he was asked.
One day some Vrishnis tried to play a trick
on a distinguished group of brahmin sages,
including Narada, who were visiting.
They dressed Krishna’s son, Samba, as a woman
and called out to the sages, “Hey, rishis,
this is the wife of Babhru. As you can see,
this lady is expecting—can you tell her
if her offspring will be male or female?
She really wants a son.” The holy brahmins
were not deceived, and they took great offense.
“Wicked and cruel louts, drunk with pride!
This son of Krishna’s will certainly give birth,
but to an iron club, which will bring destruction
and death to the entire race of Vrishnis.”
The sages traveled on to visit Krishna
and told him what had happened, and of their curse
on his crass relatives. This would fulfill
his own purposes; he would not intervene.
As was foretold, Krishna’s son gave birth
to an iron bolt, a messenger of death.
The king, Krishna’s father, in great distress
decreed that the bolt should be ground up small,
reduced to powder, and the powder then
be scattered in the sea. He issued orders
that no intoxicants of any kind
should be manufactured. The frightened people
obeyed, hoping to avert disaster.
In the sea-lapped city of Dvaraka,
Time stalked the streets in an embodied form,
a bald and monstrous figure. Few could see him
though his relentless tread was heard by many.
Cooking pots cracked; cats were born from dogs,
elephants from mules. All was awry.
Dharma began to be disregarded.
Krishna knew the signs, and as he watched
his Vrishni people wallowing in sin,
Gandhari’s old curse came into his mind.
He knew catastrophe was in the offing,
and that his time on earth was almost over.
He would see Gandhari’s words made true.
Signs of doom and decay were everywhere.
Rats and mice infested every house
and ate men’s hair and nails while they were sleeping.
Freshly cooked food rotted instantly.
There were unceasing cries of raucous birds.
People became deranged, wives attacked husbands,
fathers killed their children. Priests and elders
were treated with contempt. Witnessed by all,
Krishna’s discus rose into the air
and flew back up to those celestial regions
from whence it came. His splendid horses fled,
pulling his divine chariot behind them,
galloping over the surface of the sea.
Krishna summoned his kinsfolk and explained
Gandhari’s curse. They were filled with fear.
Knowing events would take their predestined course,
he told them to undertake a pilgrimage
along the coast, to bathe in the sacred ocean.
A huge expedition was prepared
with an armed guard and wagons of food and drink,
and the Vrishnis set off, with their families,
to Prabhasa, on the rocky coast,
where the sacred Sarasvati joined the sea.
Rather than a sober pilgrimage,
this was a bacchanal. There was loud music,
actors and acrobats entertained them,
trumpets blared and, as the sun went down,
men became more and more intoxicated.
Food that had been cooked specially for brahmins
was doused in alcohol and given to monkeys.
Krishna joined the party, silently.
Satyaki started taunting Kritavarman
for his involvement in the night attack
on the Pandava and Panchala camp.
“What kind of a kshatriya are you,
slaughtering sleeping men, put up to it
by a perverted brahmin! Shame on you!”
His friends clapped and cheered uproariously.
“What right have you to take the moral high ground?”
shouted Kritavarman, pointing the finger
of his left hand in disrespect. “Call yourself
a hero? You cut down Bhurishravas
despicably, when he had lost his arm
and had withdrawn from battle.” Krishna frowned
at Kritavarman.
The quarrel escalated.
Satyaki leapt to his feet in a fury.
“I swear,” he shouted, “you’re about to join
Draupadi’s sons, and those other heroes
you cruelly killed, you coward!” And with that
he rushed at Kritavarman and cut his head
from his body. Then Kritavarman’s friends
attacked Satyaki with any implement
that came to hand, and soon the entire party
were striking one another viciously.
Krishna watched calmly, knowing what must happen,
but when he saw his son Pradyumna killed,
then his son Samba, and Satyaki his friend,
Krishna became angry and snatched up
a handful of the coarse eraka grass
that grew there on the shore. In his hand
it became a massive, lethal club, transformed
by the powdered iron—the brahmins’ curse.
Others copied him. Each blade of grass
became a deadly weapon, capable
of penetrating the impenetrable.
Inflamed by wine, the fighters soon became
indiscriminate, father attacking son,
Mahabharata Page 76