Bhima Lone Warrior, page 29
I hurried away to find a pond. I rushed back as quickly as I could with some water in a leaf cup and saw Yudhishtira standing beside Vidura. He did not take the water from me, there was no need for it. Vidura had stopped breathing.
Yudhishtira walked away silently and I followed. When we came within sight of the hermitage, he stopped and sighed.
‘He must be at Vishnu’s feet now. Do you know something, Bhimasena?’
I saw the conflict on Yudhishtira’s gaunt face. He said, ‘He was my real father!’
I was astounded by one more of Mother’s secrets. Yudhishtira saw my confusion and said, ‘Do not blame Mother for this. It has always been customary for kshatriyas to have children by a brother’s wife. Vidura was a part of Lord Dharma.’
I listened to him in silence.
We entered the hermitage and Yudhishtira said to Krishnadvaipayana, ‘The great Vidura has slipped into a yogic sleep.’
Even at that moment, Dhritarashtra did not forget to lament, as custom demanded.
I looked at Mother with fear and anxiety, and saw no change of expression on her face.
When Yudhishtira finally mustered the courage to ask about the funeral rites, our grandfather said, ‘They are not necessary. Vidura is at Vishnu’s feet. Great yogis do not need funeral rites. Although he was born as my son, he was a part of Dharma. Before he departed for the other world, he gave you his entire consciousness.’
Krishnadvaipayana watched Dhritarashtra lamenting and said: ‘Vidura was Dharma himself. And this Pandava, Yudhishtira, is that Vidura. When Yudhishtira stands before you as your servant, why do you grieve?’
I stayed with Yudhishtira until he climbed into the chariot. Then I went back to the forest. Catching sight of Krishnadvaipayana and the sages walking towards me, I turned into another path in order to avoid seeing them.
It was Krishnadvaipayana who had prevailed upon Arjuna not to kill Ashvathama, to let him go free. I could not see his plea for mercy to the murderer of the last seeds of his race as a great action. Every time I met him, I remembered the incident.
The code of justice the Kuru race followed was beyond my comprehension.
I wandered around the forest, keeping away from the hermitage. Vidura was Dharma, the Pandava was Vidura – Grandfather had said so.
Then who was I?
Kusha grass rustled beneath my feet. Shorn of leaves, the bare branches trembled in the wind. Did the wind have anything to say to me?
Who was I?
I sat down near a pond that had almost dried up. Then I lay down and looked up through the leafless branches at a sky through which autumn clouds floated. A deer that had come to drink water thought there was no one around and came very near me, then fled into the forest, its hooves clattering, and disappeared. Once again, there was utter silence.
I heard footfalls on the dry leaves. It was Mother, with a bundle of chamata twigs in her hand.
She saw my troubled face and said, ‘Go back.’
I stood before her. For some reason, my voice grew harsh.
‘Who am I? Please tell me, at least now. So that I should not do wrong again. The sorrow of having derided my own elder brother, calling him the son of a charioteer, still weighs on my mind.’
Mother looked steadily at me. Then she said softly, ‘Karna was the son of a charioteer. Kuntibhoja’s charioteer was a handsome man. And very courageous as well. When I worked as a servant of the sages, that charioteer was the only person who showed me kindness.’
Mother’s face darkened. I saw perspiration beading her forehead.
I asked her again, ‘Who am I?’
I saw weakness on her face, helplessness. I waited for her to gather enough strength to look at me directly.
‘I accepted Vidura in order to have a son who would have great spiritual knowledge. For kshatriyas, wives are only wombs to receive their seed. So, Vidura, to have a man with spiritual knowledge as a son.’
I thought Mother was beginning to smile. But she had not answered my question. She knew that.
‘Then my husband, the king, needed a strong man. As strong as the God of the Wind. A man of might. I prayed, obediently.’ ‘And then …?’
Mother looked at the dry blades of grass, her head bowed.
‘And he was?’
Mother raised her head and looked at me as if my voice had startled her. I saw reddish flames of anger spread over her face.
She murmured, ‘He came out of the dense forest. Like an unchained tempest. A forest-dweller whose name I did not know.’
I have no idea when Mother went back, or when darkness came down, and began to wander through the emptiness of the forest.
A forceful wind that the god had unloosed from its chains passed by me, making the dark treetops tremble violently. I waited eagerly for a message. The wind burst into laughter.
I walked on, keeping my eyes on the light at the boundary of the forest.
My friends, it is time for the great journey. You know that all the old people perished in a forest fire.
Yuyutsu has been entrusted with the supervision of a palace, where the only inhabitants are Subhadra and Parikshit, the son born to Uttara by Abhimanyu. The Khandava forest, which had been burnt, has grown again and begun to envelop Indraprastha. Uloopi and Chitrangada have left for their fathers’ houses. Last of all, I said goodbye to Balandhara, and what you heard now was the sound of her chariot leaving for Kashi.
I said goodbye to Vishoka as well. My friends, your grandchildren and later their grandchildren will sit around the fire and sing the stories of Kurukshetra for the generations that follow Parikshit. I do not know who I will be in their alluring narration. Maybe they will laugh as an image takes shape before them of a man with a huge belly and a wide mouth, just like the statue in Duryodhana’s hall. Or maybe they will shudder when they see the frightening form of a man with the might of 10,000 elephants in rut, standing with his head in the sky and his feet on the earth … Whatever it be, let them go on singing.
The four of them who were getting ready for the great journey have fallen asleep. So has Draupadi. Bhimasena’s story does not end here. Like you say, sootas, stories never end.
All good wishes for the journey, my friends, for you and for me!
3
Bhima smiled. Then he stroked Draupadi’s forehead gently.
Draupadi opened her eyes once more and closed them. Her body became motionless. He laid her head, drenched in perspiration, on the ground. There was no fragrance of lotus flowers now, only the odour of human sweat.
Bhima got up.
Those who had gone in front of him were far ahead. Somewhere on the mountain of Meru, a divine chariot would be standing ready to welcome those who did not fall down on the way.
Bhima hesitated, looking at the mountain ranges. He saw below him, on the slopes, the green treetops of the forest.
The souls of those who fall down reach the Heaven of the heroes as well. A Heaven where there is no hunger or perspiration, where flowers never wither. A world meant for those who no longer feel passion or anger.
The second throne lies empty now.
Do I aspire to sit on it?
No, for I have not subdued my senses.
As I move from one deserted area to the next, my eyes search incessantly for the enemy who wanders in the unknown forests. Ashvathama.
No, I have not conquered my senses.
A Bhima who thinks that Draupadi, who fell by the wayside, is still beautiful even though she is middle-aged, has not conquered his senses.
It was no kshatriya who dwelt in me when I let the anger of selfishness smoulder inside me while sharing a woman. The man within me, roaring loud enough to make a forest quake, was a forest-dweller.
As I gazed at the green of the distant forests, I felt as if the strength I had lost was flowing back into me.
The forest which was the playground of the forest-dwellers, with its date-palm groves where elephants grazed, its rock peaks which scattered sparks when wild goats sharpened their horns on them, the cries of its hunters.
Somewhere inside it, a black-skinned beauty was wandering around, the flames of her passion still unslaked …
Somewhere there, an enemy was wandering around with an open wound on his wounded scalp.
While those two people lived, he would not be worthy of the second throne.
Planting his feet firmly on the precipitous path, Bhimasena walked towards the forest that lay like a fallen black cloud below him.
White-winged birds came down from the clouds at that moment in perfect formation and flew into the valley as if to show him the way.
EPILOGUE
T hey roamed around, singing ballads. In all the places where people gathered, particularly in centres of pilgrimage and sacrificial sites. They turned old histories as well as recent events into ballads and sang them. In the hierarchy of castes, the position they were allotted was immediately below the vaishyas. The sootas. Storytellers who enchanted their listeners with words.
They must have been a small community. Historical texts may not have descriptions of them that would warrant calling them a society, although many renowned sootas have been spoken of from time to time in an individual capacity.
Just as they were excellent charioteers, they were also gifted storytellers. In the Karna Parva of the Mahabharata, there is an incident where Shalya tells Duryodhana about a soota who feels resentful when he has to become a charioteer and serve the brahmins and the kshatriyas. Although the sootas occupied a position below the vaishyas, even people of high status respected the soota who could sing a ballad. It was true that sootas were often scolded, but the one who could spin a good tale was given an important seat anywhere and accorded great respect.
The Mahabharata is structured around an incident involving a soota who was an excellent storyteller. Fed up with a lengthy ritual that he was conducting in the Naimishya forest, the ascetic Shaunaka asked a gifted soota to sing to him in order to relieve his boredom. The story the soota sang was composed by Krishnadvaipayana, who is the poet-sage Vyasa himself, and narrated by Vaishambayana. The soota had heard this story at the time when King Janamejaya was conducting a great ritual. Janamejaya’s father, King Parikshit, had died of a snakebite when his son was still a baby. When Janamejaya grew up and became king, he decided to conduct a very elaborate ritual called a sarpasatra and kill all the serpents in the world, to avenge his father.
The sage Vyasa came to this ritual and Janamejaya requested him to sing. On Vyasa’s instructions, his disciple Vaishambayana sang the story of the Mahabharata, which the soota who later attended Shaunaka’s ritual in the Naimishya forest heard and committed to memory. The soota’s story dealt with people who had lived three generations before him and was one in which the author, Krishnadvaipayana, who later became the sage Vyasa, transforms into a character. Because the author appears in an unimportant role in the epic, and because of the way the story is crafted, we tend to look at him from a distance, although he is actually very close to us.
In its initial form, the Mahabharata, which was initially called Jaya, was a heroic tale and researchers say that is all it was. There are scholars who think it took on its present form after several people added philosophical tenets and sub-stories to the original tale. The conclusion that it is a text to which many Vyasas contributed, Vyasas who were compilers, editors and publishers, infuriates those who revere the halo of divinity that lies over the Mahabharata. But, in general, everyone admits that there was a main body of work to which many additions were made later.
There is no doubt that there is a great genius at work behind this rare oeuvre. Whatever differences of opinion there might be about the period or authorship of this poem that Krishnadvaipayana ‘created’ after editing the Vedas, all historians and researchers of later periods have had the utmost respect for it.
It is said that everything that exists is in the Mahabharata and this is no idle boast. History, Geography, Botany, Zoology: they are all part of it. Do you want to know about the movements of the wind? There is a whole chapter on the subject. Do you want to learn Anatomy, or the symptoms of diseases? They are there for you. It is a great and rare work and a most poignant human story. The Iliad of the Greeks would pale in comparison. The Shahnama of the Persians cannot be reckoned as anywhere near it.
Many years ago – during a period of my life when I imagined that I too had read the Mahabharata, having gone through Thunchath Ezhuthachan’s Kilipattu and C. Rajagopalachari’s Bharatasangraha – the great Malayalam poet Akkitham advised me to read the Malayalam translation of the full-length version of the epic done by Kunjukuttan Thampuran, the poet and scholar who belonged to the royal family of Kodungalloor. Later, the well-known Malayalam writer P.C. Kuttikrishnan insisted, ‘You must read the entire Mahabharata once. It will stand you in good stead. It was because I read it that I wrote the novel, Ummachoo’.
It took me a few more years to take up Kunjukuttan Thampuran’s translation. I read through it initially as if fulfilling a duty, then realized what I had missed. My sense of responsibility towards it turned into a passion. Once I had read the great work, I could not put it aside. Thampuran’s translation is obscure in many places, even displeasing in some. Nevertheless, it helped me discover a great poet, a storyteller par excellence. I paid obeisance to Thampuran in my mind. Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s prose translation in English, which has tried to be as just as possible to Vyasa’s great oeuvre, came to my help later. Ganguli’s Mahabharata is the result of another extraordinary human effort.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Dr Reynold Ross of the India Office Library wrote to Pratap Chandra Roy, a leading publisher in Calcutta, pointing out the necessity for an authoritative prose translation of the Mahabharata in English. Roy agreed with him. But whom could he find to take on the responsibility? Several people discouraged him, saying the project might be considered against the Hindu religion. Roy discussed the question with Ishvar Chandra Vidyasagar. Vidyasagar was of the opinion that the translation would have a unified form only if one person did the entire work. He advised Roy to first find the necessary funds, then look for a suitable translator.
He found a person who declared he was ready to take it on: Kisari Mohan Ganguli. Working diligently on it from 1883 to 1896, Ganguli completed the translation. He was insistent that his name should not be revealed. When the work began to come out in serial form in 1904, the translator’s name was not mentioned. Pratap Chandra Roy started the publication and his wife, Sundari Bala Roy, completed it after his death. People from Kerala knew the translation under Pratap Chandra Roy’s name. The British government even gave Roy various awards for the translation. The first edition was sold out during Ganguli’s lifetime. The edition that came out immediately after he died did not carry his name either. It was only in 1974, when the numerous printing errors were corrected and a new edition issued, that we discovered that Ganguli was behind this great achievement.
Ganguli’s Mahabharata retains the lyricism of the original poem. Whenever doubts arise, he points out the differences between the Poona and Calcutta editions. There is also a Kumbakonam edition. Several studies based on these three editions have been of great help to me.
When the epoch of the Mahabharata becomes the setting for a novel, innumerable doubts arise to confuse the author. He has to acquaint himself with countless details: the landscapes of that era, its agricultural patterns and lifestyle, the architecture of the houses, dress, ornaments, food habits, objects used in everyday living and so on. He has to study the codes of war and weapons. English translations of Sanskrit works were very helpful in these areas, particularly Vedic India, Vedic Index by A.A. McDonald and A.B. Keith, Ralph Griffith’s study of the Yajur Veda, Georg Buhler’s Sacred Laws of the East, Julius Eggerling’s Shata Patha Brahmanam, Pandit Rajaram’s Dhanurveda Sankalanam, Pandit Ajaya Mitra Sastri’s India in the Brihad Samhita and Yohann J. Meyer’s Sexual Life in Ancient Bharatha. Other works that helped me to study the culture of that epoch are too numerous to be mentioned and I will not list them here.
There are two characters in the epics that children all over India have always loved and admired: Hanuman of the Ramayana and Bhima of the Mahabharata. Both are personifications of strength. In Kerala, many warnings are handed out to children in Bhima’s name. ‘Don’t let your legs hang out of the bed when you sleep, it will rob you of your strength. Duryodhana always gave Bhima a small mat to sleep on, in order to lessen his strength.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Bhima kept both his legs on the mat and let his head be outside it!’
The child laughs, amazed at Bhima.
There are so many stories of this kind.
Anyone who reads the Mahabharata attentively will realize that the real Bhima is not the Bhima presented to the young minds that devour children’s literature and illustrated classics. Bhima has not only a huge body, but also a great mind. The Bhima of the Mahabharata is a human being, an archetypal image with human weaknesses and strengths. Several scholars who have done studies of the human story that is the Mahabharata have cursed those who added childish stories and inconsistencies to it to satisfy the whims of priesthood.
I have not made any changes to the framework of the story that Krishnadvaipayana, the first Vyasa, codified. The parts where I have taken liberties are those in which he maintained a silence that those who came later were to find meaningful. There are moments when, between the lines, he gives us hints. For example, Vyasa himself hints clearly that Yudhishtira is Vidura’s son. In the Ashramavasa Parva, when Vidura has sacrificed his life after renouncing food and going into meditation, Krishnadvaipayana points to Yudhishtira and says:
Dharma is Vidura and Vidura himself is the Pandava
That Pandava stands before you as your servant.
(Kunjukuttan Thampuran’s Malayalam translation)
It is significant that, at the moment of Vidura’s death, the entire radiance of his consciousness enters Yudhishtira.
