Read THE MAHABHARATA: A Modern Rendering, Vol 1 Online
Authors: Ramesh Menon
When night fell, Vyasa knocked for the second time at Ambika’s door. It opened slowly and she stood there, now her face covered by a veil. No lamp burned in the room and he could see only dimly by the starlight that glimmered through the windows. When she brought the silver pitcher to wash his feet, he was pleased to see that her hands did not tremble. Unlike the first night he had been here, she bent and wiped his feet dry with a firm touch.
In a clear voice, she said, “Welcome, my lord, I have waited impatiently for you.”
Vyasa was surprised! She had not uttered a word the last time; she had been so terrified. Now, to his growing astonishment, she came and sat near him in the dark.
She whispered and there was eagerness in her voice, “I am glad you have come.”
She took his hand and brought it to her breast. She had undone her blouse when she went to put away the water. He was pleased: she must have thought back on their first night together and decided she liked him. Yet, even as she lifted her veil and began to kiss him and to caress him with some abandon, he remembered when she had shut her eyes that first night.
But tonight it was not he who stripped away her clothes and his own, but she. And she did not shut her eyes, he could tell even in the dimness. She was like another woman tonight as she ministered to him. Laughing softly in her deep warm way, she could not wait to lead him to her bed.
“You have changed,” he observed quietly. “The last time, you were afraid.”
She smiled in the night, stroking him, “The last time I had never been with a man like you before. I can’t say the same tonight.”
She laid him down and made such tender love to him until dawn Vyasa feared he would lose his heart to her. At the first flush of the sun on the horizon, she left him asleep and melted from the room. Vyasa slept for some hours and it was Satyavati who awakened him.
She was eager to know how the night had gone. “Did she shut her eyes again?”
Vyasa shook his head, smiling.
“Did she turn pale?”
“No,” he murmured, “she did not.”
Satyavati sighed in satisfaction. “So I will have a grandson who is neither blind nor pale.”
“Surely you will and he will be a boy of great wisdom.”
“Oh, I am content!” cried his mother.
“But there is one small matter,” mused her son. “It was not with your daughter-in-law that I spent last night, but her sakhi.”
Ambika was summoned and confessed she had been so afraid that in her place, she had sent her favorite maid, who was very like her in build if not in temperament. Satyavati begged Vyasa, “You must visit Ambalika again, we must…”
But he cut her short in a voice that brooked no argument. “Three times is as often as a hermit may risk himself with a woman.”
Vyasa went away from Hastinapura. He wended his way back to the Himalaya, where he sat in dhyana. It was to take him a long time before he had his serenity back. One night of the three he spent with a woman haunted him. He felt her velvet body against his; he tasted her fervid kisses. Worst of all, she had touched him deeper than the flesh. If ever Veda Vyasa came dangerously near falling in love, if perhaps he did fall in love, it was on the enchanted night he spent with Ambika’s maid, whose name he never learnt. It took him years of tapasya before her memory receded from his meditation.
And she, simple, passionate woman, never forgot him for the rest of her days.
THE THREE PRINCES OF HASTINAPURA
When he was born, Vyasa’s third son had a long, grave face from which soulful eyes gazed with an intuition and humor that bespoke intelligence far beyond the ordinary. They called him Vidura.
It fell once more to their uncle Bheeshma, who was no blood of theirs, to raise those princes. He also ruled the kingdom with wisdom and inspiration. Bheeshma became the boys’ surrogate father and taught them everything they learnt as they grew. The princes were as different from one another as could be and they were, each in his way, remarkably gifted.
Dhritarashtra, the oldest, was as strong as a lion. Pandu, the albino, was a master of archery when he was ten. And Vidura, the maidservant’s son, was a prince of the intellect. He was serene and his insight into men and the world was swift, deep and unerring. When they reached their youth, Bheeshma crowned Dhritarashtra yuvaraja of the Kurus. He had raised Pandu to become the Senapati of the Kuru army and Vidura would be the king’s main minister and counselor. Slowly, Bheeshma began to entrust more and more power to the princes. Blind Dhritarashtra would never really reign because he could not see. So white Pandu gradually began to rule in his older brother’s name and to rule ably with the sage counsel of his brother Vidura.
The time came and Bheeshma turned his attention to the marriages of his wards. Subalu, the Gandhara king, had a lovely daughter who was a pious Siva-bhakta as well. The king of Madra also had a daughter of exceptional beauty. Bheeshma called Vidura and said to him, “The lineage of Gandhara and Madra are equal to ours, as no other line of these times is. Their princesses are fine girls. We must ask their fathers for their hands for Dhritarashtra and Pandu.”
Bheeshma sent a messenger to the Gandhara king, who was reluctant because Dhritarashtra was blind. But when the princess Gandhari heard of the proposal, the God-fearing girl told her father she had had a dream in which Siva came to her and said she would marry a sightless king. She had no objection to marrying Dhritarashtra.
Escorted by her brother Shakuni, Subalu sent Gandhari to Hastinapura to become Dhritarashtra’s queen. Her arrival in the Kuru capital created a stir among the people and not only because she was so beautiful. Before she entered that city, the princess bound her eyes with a square of dark silk and swore never to remove that cloth as long as Dhritarashtra lived.
The wedding of Dhritarashtra and Gandhari was celebrated in Hastinapura. Then Shakuni returned to his father in Gandhara.
Some years after Dhritarashtra’s marriage, the king of Madra held a swayamvara for his daughter Madri, to which a thousand kshatriyas came. But the moment pale Pandu stalked into the enclosure of that swayamvara the causes of all the rest were lost. The princess’ eyes never left his face: she had been struck by the subtle lightning of the heart. When she was handed the garland of wildflowers with which to declare her choice, without a moment’s hesitation she crossed the marble floor and draped it around Pandu’s neck.
Bheeshma was pleased the Kuru household had been enriched by these two princesses, Gandhari and Madri. After the years of lonely trial, he felt gratified. But Madri was not Pandu’s first wife.
King Soora of the Vrishnis, who were a branch of the Yadavas descended from Soma Deva, the Moon God, had a son and a daughter called Vasudeva and Pritha. Soora had a cousin who was like a brother to him. That king, Kuntibhoja, had no children and was obsessed by this lack. Soora, who had grown up with him, feared that Kuntibhoja was on the verge of either losing his mind or taking his life. He gave his daughter Pritha to his cousin, to raise as his own.
Kuntibhoja’s dejection vanished like winter’s frost on the mountain at the advent of spring. Pritha became his perennial spring and he loved that charming girl better than anything else. She was his sun, moon and stars; she was his world, his universe. He named her after himself, because he could not bear to think that she was not his in any way. He called her Kunti. Kunti was exquisite; she was wise beyond her years. She was everything her foster-father could have wanted her to be. And best of all, she doted on him.
Kunti grew up in Kuntibhoja’s palace and she grew more beautiful every day. The people and the kings and queens who saw her all said that nowhere in Bharatavarsha was there a princess like Kunti. Some said, surely, she was more suited to be the wife of a Deva in heaven, than the queen of a mortal king: they never knew how near prescience they came.
This was the dwapara yuga, when the world had not yet been shut away from Devaloka, as it would be when the kali yuga arrived. Immortal sages and luculent gods still came openly among men.
Of course, the dwapara yuga was drawing to a close and darkness was falling swiftly over the earth. But those were still times when rishis like Vyasa and Durvasa lived in the sacred land of Bharata.
One day, the Muni Durvasa appeared in Kuntibhoja’s city. Fate had brought him here, for he had a gift to bestow on the Vrishnis. There was a dramatic design unfolding in time, for which the holy one was chosen to be a catalyst.
Durvasa was often described as an amsa of Lord Siva and his temper was legendary. So when that rishi came to Kuntibhoja’s court, he was received not only with affection but trepidation as well: lest he was offended by some trifle and cursed the king and his kingdom. Of course, Durvasa was not nearly as temperamental as he was reputed to be. Yet, it was true that among the great sages this one was more easily angered than most: with him, it did well to err on the side of caution. And innocent as all mortals are of fate, Kuntibhoja entrusted the task of looking after his guest to his daughter Kunti.
Young Kunti, who was barely fourteen, fulfilled her difficult task so graciously that even Durvasa, a hard man to please, was delighted with her. The day before he left he sent for the young princess. It was late evening. Birds were roosting in their armfuls in the darkening trees outside. Durvasa sensed fate so near him, he felt he could reach out and touch her.
Kunti came in and he made her sit beside him. He laid his hand on her head and said fondly, “Dear Kunti, what a special child you are. You have looked after me so well I have decided to give you a gift that none of your father’s friends can match.
I am going to teach you a mantra. It is old and powerful and once you know it I will tell you what it is for.”
He made the girl kneel before him. As she repeated the secret words after him, Durvasa felt the tide of destiny surge in his body; on its wave-crests rode resplendent kshatriyas of a strange future. For the life of him, the muni could not understand why he had decided to teach this princess a mantra that was certainly not meant for a child like her. But then, he understood little of why, in the first place, he had come to Kuntibhoja’s city.
“Have you learnt it?”
Kunti nodded. She rose, sat beside him again and asked, “What is it for?”
For a moment, Durvasa did not reply. He was uncertain whether he should, after all, tell her what the incantation really was. Then he said, “It is a mantra for the Devas. Think of any Deva as you say it aloud and he will appear before you.”
She gave a delighted laugh. Durvasa spoke so gravely that a part of her believed him completely. But another part, which was still a child, just couldn’t conceive that she could summon a God. Durvasa smiled at the princess, but he wondered what he had set afoot.
The next day, blessing Kuntibhoja and his wispy, adorable daughter, that profound sage went on his way.
A month passed and Kunti had almost forgotten about Durvasa and his mantra. Her youth was flowering, her body filling out into womanhood. Warm new yearnings awoke in her. One day, fate took a dramatic hand in her young life.
It was spring and dawn. Kunti had just woken up. The morning sun crept over the horizon and poured in through her window in a cascade of crimson and gold. She rose and sat on the edge of her bed, so she was drenched in that first light. Under her window, the river lapped at the palace walls, she also touched awake by the livid star. Kunti thought how wonderful it must be to be a naked river, embraced each dawn by a replenished sun. Every night must be like a death and each morning like a new birth: ecstatic! The birds in the trees sang as they have done every sunrise since there was a world.
Kunti felt her youth inflamed by the sheer magic of the hour. Like the river, she felt intimately caressed by the sun. She quivered with sensations she was certain were quite improper and all the more delicious for being so. She felt as if burning Surya Deva held her in incandescent arms.
Kunti hardly knew how, but she folded her hands like a lotus bud and whispered Durvasa’s mantra.
As the mystic words spilled from her lips, there was the strangest flash of light. Something extraordinary was happening to the stream of sun’s rays that flowed in through her window. They had become intolerably bright and shone with a hundred colors. Kunti shut her eyes in terror. What had she done? Then she heard it, a low, but quite distinct sound: there was someone else in the room. Could it be…?
Her eyes flew open and she cried out—standing not five feet from her was a dazzling being whose body was a cool fire and his hair wavy flames. Kunti breathed, “Durvasa’s mantra worked! I called and you came.” Almost as if she was talking to herself and he was just a dream. “Oh, how splendid you are, Surya Deva!”
He stood there, so implacable, his light blotting out the rest of the world. It was as if just she and he were alone together in a place that was not only her bedchamber, but also another world. She saw his eyes roving over her with a far from innocent look.
He, the God, said slowly, “What do you want from me?”
She knew what she wanted from him and wouldn’t dare admit it. She mumbled falsely, “Why, nothing. I saw you rising and you set the river alight and the birds all sang to you. I thought I would like you to come to me. So I said the mantra and here you are.”
“The Devas do not appear before mortals for their mere fancy. We come only when a great purpose of fate is to be fulfilled.”
Kunti bit her lip and whispered, “Deva, what do you want from me?”
“Young woman, I want you.”
“Oh! How can you even think such a thing?”
But his eyes were grave and mocking. With a sinking feeling, she knew he would not relent. The cool Sun said, “The rishi taught you a mantra for childbearing. Perhaps he did not say?”
The Sun God clicked his tongue and shook his head of spectral flames.
“But what will the world say if you give me a child? What will my poor father say? It will kill him if he knows I am not a virgin.” Tears rolled down her face in a slow procession.
It is told that even the Sun, who has burned in the sky since before earth was made and is the witness of the world, lost his heart to young Kunti. He put his arms around her and unearthly warmth surged through her body, calming her. He stroked her hair and her face. Soon she began to forget all her fears; instead, she was on soft fire.
He assured her, “Our child will be born immediately and you will feel no pain. You will still be a virgin and no one will ever know what happened between you and me.”
He was invading her with his delirious warmth. Ripples of excitement flowed from some core of her that she had never known existed. She heard his assurances and knew he would not lie. Young Kunti gave a moan of sheer lust. She flung her slender arms round his neck and kissed him feverishly. That kiss coursed such dreams through her heart, dreams with the power of sun-flares. She hardly knew when he lifted her nightgown over her head. She did not hear herself cry out, as the God fastened his lips to her breast.
Kunti was borne far from herself, far from the earth. With him beside her, she flew in a burning chariot of the sky, through visionary mandalas. And made a woman by the Sun himself, she draped her legs around his neck like a wild-flower garland and a hundred tumults shook her.
When he had finished and rose away from her, she smiled gratefully at him.
“We are in another world and no time passes on earth,” said the God.
He placed his hand on her flat, young girl’s belly. When she looked down, she saw her body there was full of light. “My son grows in you,” breathed Surya Deva. The child in her grew swifter than time. In moments, with just a quavering of her loins, he was born. The father held the glorious infant in his arms.
“Look, he wears kavacha and kundala.” It was true, their baby was born wearing golden armor and earrings. Already, the little one looked like his luculent sire.
The Deva went on, in wistful prophecy, “He will be the greatest archer on earth. He will be kind and generous to a fault, but proud and sensitive as well, because he is born to a twisted destiny. Yet, his fame will live in the world as long as the sun and the moon are in the sky.”
Surya handed the child to its mother and vanished from her room as abruptly as he had come. Kunti tried her best to raise a spark of motherhood, but she was too young to feel maternal toward her fabulous child. The whole morning seemed like a dream, except for the baby she cradled in her arms, his long eyes still shut fast in the slumber of infancy.
Now that her supernal lover had gone, shame and fear returned sharply. The princess dreaded to think what would happen if the child was discovered. True, before he went she felt the God restoring her virginity. But how would she explain the infant with the golden armor and earrings?
She crossed to the window, thinking even to be rid of the child by flinging him out. She felt no twinge of anything maternal, only panic. Under her window, the river flowed as calmly as ever. As she stood there with the unwanted infant in her arms an idea stole over the princess Kunti, rather as the sun had.
In a fever of haste, she pulled a square of silk from among her clothes and swaddled her baby in it as securely as she could. From the next room, she fetched a sandalwood box in which she had received a gift the previous day. She set him down in it, making him cozy by stuffing its sides with more cloth. She fetched a long cloak, which she put on.
Hiding the box under the cloak, Kunti stole out of her apartment. Nodding perfunctorily to the servants she saw along the passage that wound down to the level of the river, she strode along. At last, with a whimper of relief, she came out through a side-door into the sunlit day. This was her private garden, at the bottom of which the river flowed through the palace grounds. She saw there was no one about.
Kunti broke into a run and reached the bank of the river. Under a tree that grew out over the water, she turned to make sure she was unobserved. Kneeling quickly at the current’s edge, she was about to float the little box on the murmuring flow, when her sun-child opened his eyes and gazed up at his mother. He gurgled in his little throat and smiled at her. She bent helplessly to kiss him and now tears streamed down her cheeks. Kunti floated the wooden box down the river.
She raised her eyes to the sky. She folded her hands to the burning Deva and cried, “Watch over our son, let no evil befall him.”
Young Kunti wept beside the river. As he floated out of her life, bobbing upon the bland current, she blessed her baby: “May all your paths be auspicious. May the lord of rivers guard you; may the lord of the air watch over you; may all the Gods protect you. And when I see you again one day, let me know you by your golden kavacha and kundala.”
She sobbed after him, “How fortunate she will be who finds you and raises you. But oh, my son, I am not that woman.”
The box with its precious cargo grew smaller; soon it was only a dark speck on the water. She cried after it, “God bless you, my child, God bless you!”
Her son was lost in the distances of the river. She stood gazing after him for a long time before she turned back to her father’s palace. In a single incredible hour, her life had been transformed forever.
Everyone said a new maturity had come over the princess Kunti; it was time she married. She smiled and asked innocently how she, who lived such a cloistered life in her father’s house, could mature so suddenly. But at nights when she slept and whenever she was alone, an unvarying image haunted her dreams and her solitude. She saw a wooden box floating away from her. She saw the small, brilliant face of him who lay in that box and Kunti thought she would go mad with guilt.