The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering (2 Vols.), page 11
Dhritarashtra declared a celebration in Hastinapura. Nine months passed; Gandhari had to be confined in bed, where she lay in intense discomfort, and often in pain. Her child—or children if Vyasa’s prediction was true—was monstrously heavy. The weight inside her was dark and leaden, and her dreams were so evil she was afraid to fall asleep.
At the end of a painful year came the news from the forest that Kunti was already a mother. Gandhari’s screams rang through the harem; fate had cheated her. In agony anyway at her morbid pregnancy, the queen became hysterical. She struck herself again and again in her belly, until she began to bleed. As she fainted, she was aborted of a seething mass of flesh that was hard as a rock and stank of contagion.
Groaning dementedly in her bed, she ordered the putrescent lump cast into the forest. A maid was carrying the wretched thing out, when suddenly Vyasa appeared at the palace-gates. His face twitching, he accosted the young woman, and cried, “What is it? Where are you taking it?”
She drew back the cloth that covered the shapeless flesh. “My queen was aborted of this an hour ago.”
Vyasa caught his breath. Seizing the maid’s arm, hurting her in his urgency, he brought her back into the palace. The rishi shouted to the women of the harem, “Give me a hundred earthen vats of warm oil. Put them in a hidden chamber. Hurry! There isn’t a moment to lose.”
Gandhari appeared there, dishevelled and sobbing. She cried, “Muni, you said I would have a hundred sons, each as strong as my husband. Instead I have borne this putrid lump of flesh.”
But Vyasa said, “Go back to your bed, woman. A hundred sons you shall have. The words of Vyasa Dwaipayana have never yet been proved vain.”
When the earthen vats were ready in a cellar below the harem, Vyasa took the abortion down into that chamber. He sprinkled the flesh with cold water, and then patiently divided it with his hands into one hundred pieces. He gave them to a midwife to be immersed, each one in a separate vat of oil.
Gandhari also arrived in that room, in irresistible curiosity. She stood at the door, her bound face craning to the sound of Vyasa’s fine hands at their strange work. The lump of flesh dwindled as he pinched off more and more thumb-sized bits. The queen counted every one from the sounds that were so clear to her powerful hearing. As he neared the end of his task, a wish flared into Gandhari’s mind. “I will be the mother of a hundred mighty sons. Can’t I have a daughter as well, a sister to those hundred?”
At that very moment, Vyasa had given the hundredth bit of flesh to the midwife. But he still had one final piece left in his hand. As if he divined her thought, her father-in-law said to Gandhari, “I have placed a hundred pieces of the flesh you bore in vats of oil. They shall be your sons. But I have one small piece left; let this be your daughter.”
A hundred and first vat was called for, and Vyasa gave the midwife that final shred of flesh to sink in it. The moment this was done, a susurrus filled that cellar, as of countless bees buzzing. The startled midwife saw those hundred and one earthen vats glow dully, with a malignant aura. Vyasa came out of that room, and said quietly to Gandhari, “The future has been set in motion.”
Blessing Gandhari and Dhritarashtra, that they may find the strength to bear the trial that lay ahead of them, Vyasa went away from Hastinapura. He wended his way back to the Himalayas, which are cosmic masters of the Spirit dwelling on earth as towering mountains. There, he would perform a tapasya to save the world. That rishi, who saw deep and far in time, already realized the danger those hundred vats contained, especially the first of them, in which the piece of flesh was somewhat larger than in the others.
The pieces of flesh grew into tiny human foetuses. They grew in those vats of oil as if in a hundred and one women’s wombs. As they grew, their weird lustre filled the cellar, which Gandhari had sealed as Vyasa instructed her to. That light was like an evil sun risen in the bowels of Hastinapura.
Another year passed, and it was the same night when, in a faraway forest, Kunti gave birth to Bheema. It was a night when uncanny fires rose from the earth around the city of the Kurus and spumed into the sky in livid geysers. Wild beasts from deep jungles, wolves and black panthers with gleaming eyes, jackals and hyena-packs, came crowding and baying into the city’s streets as soon as the sun had set. Crows, vultures and other birds of carrion flew down in teeming swarms and settled on the terraces of the palace. Twisting cyclones that are seen only out at sea, and other winds, dust-laden and flecked with sulphur, lashed the city of elephants. Squadrons of vampire bats, flown from some hell to greet their master to be born, obscured the face of the full moon. The planets hid themselves in the sky and a thousand spirit-hosts stalked the land, while it rained glowing, hissing drops of blood and flames. In the cellar below Dhritarashtra’s palace, the first of the one hundred and one vats burst open with a report that reverberated through the passages and brought Gandhari and her midwife running.
When they unlocked the door and went in, the maid cried out in fear. There on the cold floor, in a pool of luminous slime, lay an immense child. His terrible serpent’s eyes were wide open and stared at them unwinkingly. Those eyes belonged to a Demon of the pit that had taken a human form to become the bane of the earth. The child’s body glowed with the same macabre aura that coloured the foetal slime in which he lay. The sinister infant gave a dismal cry and the poor midwife felt her blood turn to ice. That cry was not in the least human, but the long scream of a feral beast.
Outside, there arose the greeting of the night—the grunts, wails, howls, chatters, roars, growls, shrill ululations, the manic laughter and a million wing-beats of the animals and birds of darkness congregated to welcome their lord into the world. And he called back to them, his creatures, in a devilish voice that was all their voices at once: bat’s screech, wolf’s bay, hyena’s deranged cackle, bray and growl, roar and howl, in vile cacophony.
At which din, the second vat burst open, and then quickly the third and the fourth; and then, two, three and more, all at once. Gandhari and the midwife shrank back in fear. Now the king came down into that chamber with Vidura. Vidura stood horrified to see those children of hell lying in their slime, while their creatures outside still howled their welcome through the shocked night.
Fortunately for them, Dhritarashtra and Gandhari saw nothing of what happened in that cellar; but Vidura’s gaze never left the first and biggest of those hundred and one infants. That monstrous child grinned with needle teeth; his green eyes were on fire. Grunting like a pig, he had already managed to pull himself into a sitting posture. He sat fondling himself lewdly, while all around him the earthen vats continued to burst open, until the last one, from which a little girl was born. All those children howled back at the night, in a bizarre chorus.
Feeling suddenly weak, Dhritarashtra grasped Vidura’s arm and said, “Take me out of here!”
But Gandhari stood rooted. Soft mother’s joy was upon her, and she said to the midwife, “Give me my first son and my daughter. Don’t you hear them crying? They are hungry.”
She heard no wolf howl, no bat screech, or hyena cackle from her children’s throats. By the sublime mystery of motherhood, she heard only human babies crying to be fed. She squatted on the floor and bared her breasts for her son and her daughter. They fastened greedy lips to her flesh and fed voluptuously.
In his lamplit sabha, Dhritarashtra shivered as if he had a fever. Wild visions of evil danced before his blind eyes. He saw crimsoned battlefields, where corpses lay piled like hills and blood flowed in rills. He saw them as clearly as sighted men see the light and the events of day. Only Vidura stood beside his brother, and he knew what this night presaged. Vidura already saw what must be the tragic future of their royal House, founded by Manu, the lawgiver, himself.
At last, Dhritarashtra said, “My son is a year younger than Pandu’s firstborn in the jungle. Yudhishtira will inherit the Kuru throne.”*
The jackals and wolves outside howled in long unison, and the night was alive with fear. The king leaned forward in his throne, and whispered, “But tell me, my brother, will my son rule after Yudhishtira’s time? Vidura, I am terrified by the omens. The birds and beasts of death have flocked into Hastinapura’s streets. Listen to the wolves baying! I am told occult fires leap into the sky from the earth’s belly, and the very world quakes, as if in fear at my children’s birth. What does it all mean, Vidura? Do my sons seem strange to those who can see?”
Vidura said softly, “The omens mean only one thing, Dhritarashtra: that your firstborn son will be the ruin of the House of Kuru. It is for him that the dog-packs bay and the wolves howl, and the bats of hell wheel in dizzy circles. The omens cry that he is the terrible one of whom the old prophecies warned. He will destroy everything that has been held sacred through the ages, and fetch doom to this holy land.”
Dhritarashtra breathed, “What can I do to keep doom away?”
“What you will not do, my lord. You can sacrifice your son. Kill him tonight.”
The blind king gasped. Vidura went on, “The wise have always said an individual may be sacrificed for the good of the family, a family for the good of the village, the village for the country. And everything, even the world itself, may be sacrificed for the sake of the immortal soul. O my brother, it is for the soul of mankind that this monstrous child of yours has come from the depths of hell: to corrupt and to destroy. Kill him now, and I swear his brothers will be harmless. And you can enjoy them, ninety-nine fine princes. But him you must not leave alive.”
But that child, of whom the darkest prophecies told, was Dhritarashtra’s firstborn. Vidura was right to assume that his brother would never do what he asked.
The same night, a vaishya woman in Dhritarashtra’s harem was also delivered of a son sired by the blind king. That child was named Yuyutsu. And so Dhritarashtra had one hundred and one sons, and a daughter whom they named Dussala. And his eldest, the Demon, was Duryodhana. *
As they grew into strapping young princes, the king was pleased with his powerful boys. He laughed in joy to think of the hundred of them, and Gandhari rejoiced as well.3
*This is the same day that Bheema is born in the forest.
*Duryodhana is also frequently called Suyodhana, throughout the original text. Yudhishtira is also known as Ajatashatru, (he who has no enemies) and Bheema is often called Vrikodara, while Arjuna acquires ten names. Karna is called Radheya and Vaikartana, too.
3See Appendix for the hundred names.
TWENTY-TWO
Sweet, deadly spring
FIFTEEN IDYLLIC YEARS PASSED IN THE FOREST OF SATASRINGA. THE sons of Pandu grew swiftly, and their brilliance with them. They hunted in those wilds, swam and fished in the rivers. They learnt the ways of the jungle-folk, and about the deep motions of the stars in the sky. They studied the Vedas and the other Shastras from erudite rishis in the asramas. But one day, fate seemed to decide that the idyll had lasted long enough.
Yudhishtira was fifteen winters old, when spring arrived once more with a burst of flowers on the trees. Bird-song trilled from countless vivid throats and heady scents wafted through the airy passages of the forest. After the long cold, the season of love had arrived again: mating time. The wild creatures were all in rut. Serpents came out of their holes and entwined. Elephant and mountain-goat, panther and wolf, the eagle on his eyrie, and the smaller birds in the lower reaches of the hills, butterflies in the air, fish in the frothy brooks and insects under mossy stones were all at love.
One morning, Kunti had taken the five young Pandavas to a nearby asrama. Pandu was alone that day; he had not seen Madri either. He decided to take a stroll in the scented woods and pluck some lotuses for his wives from the pools that brimmed with startling blooms. Humming to himself, he walked along the familiar cedar aisles. The air was crisp and clear, the spring morning perfect and, it seemed to that hermit prince, alive with a mystic loveliness. He strolled through the woods and arrived in a clearing where a stream flowed, from which they drew their drinking water, and bathed in its sparkling currents.
Walking into that clearing, Pandu saw Madri at a bend in the stream. He stood still behind a large cedar, and his senses throbbed with a fever he thought he had long since known the last of; which is why it took him so unawares. That morning, Pandu saw something he had not seen for eighteen years: a naked woman. Madri had just put away her clothes on a smooth stone beside the jungle stream. She stood for a moment, testing the water with her foot before she waded into it. The sight of her body, filled out lushly with the years, touched Pandu like wildfire.
He stood transfixed, his mind reeling at seeing her like that after so long. Suddenly, it did not matter to Pandu whether he lived or died. The sight of naked Madri as she waded into the stream, the sight of her hips and breasts, her long, smooth arms and, most of all, the darkness that nestled between her fair thighs was more than he could bear. It was more than he could tear himself away from and run from that place as if death was after him.
He saw her as a young man sees his first naked woman, and all that mattered was to possess this dream at once. Like a hunter stalking his prey, he darted from one tree to another, his eyes never leaving the woman as she bathed in the warm water. Until, he stood behind a pine not five feet from the stone on which her clothes lay.
She finished bathing. When she came out and began to dry herself, he gave a strangled cry and darted out from hiding. At first she also cried out. But when she saw it was he, she smiled. She was full of languor from her bath and pleased that he had been watching her. Then she saw the state he was in and grew afraid.
“My lord, you mustn’t. The curse!”
Without a word, breathing hard, he seized her in arms that were still so powerful and forced her down on the soft grass. She flailed about to get free. But he was too strong, and then she herself was swept away by his urgency. Realizing that protest would be of no use, she prayed that after so many years the rishi’s curse might not be potent. She shut her eyes and, with a moan, clasped him to her. He bared himself in a flash, thrust himself into her like fire and began to move on her convulsively, crying aloud in release.
But even as ecstasy swept over him, and Madri found her sharp joy, that pale prince was borne right out of his body. As if he could not bear the intensity of what he felt, clutching his wife, Pandu went limp in her arms. She lay briefly in her own swoon. But when she tried to move him off her, where he lay heavy and inert, Madri saw that her husband was dead.
Kunti was on her way back home with the boys. Hearing Madri’s screams they ran towards the stream. Cradling Pandu in her arms, Madri heard them calling anxiously to her from across the water. Quickly covering her nakedness, she cried, “Kunti, leave the children and come alone!”
The boys waited at a distance, while Kunti ran over and saw what had happened. Her cry rang among the trees. Kneeling beside her dead husband, she turned fiercely on Madri. “How could you?” she wailed. “How could you allow it, you wretched woman?”
Angrily, she took Pandu’s body from Madri and laid his serene face in her own lap. Madri sobbed, “He took me by force, I couldn’t stop him. Believe me, Kunti, I couldn’t stop him though I tried.”
Gradually, Kunti’s fit of sobbing subsided. Setting Pandu’s head down gently on the grass she said, “Ah Madri, your deepest wish has come true: he chose to die in your arms rather than mine.” Jealousy flashed in her eyes, where Madri had never seen it before. Kunti whispered, “It was you who saw the bloom of love on his face, you who knew him as a man again.”
Her lips quivered, then she said quietly, “He died in your arms all right, but I will follow him to the land of the manes.”
By now their sons came there and saw their father lying on the ground. They stood numb, until Kunti told them to carry Pandu back to asrama. Meanwhile, hearing the women scream, some rishis also arrived there. They went back to the asrama with the bereaved family. Kunti dressed her husband’s body in his royal silks, which he had not put on for eighteen years. She laid him out in their garden, as if in state, on the rope-cot he had slept on.
There seemed to be a smile on Pandu’s face. Her courage melting away at the sight of him lying there, Kunti knelt beside him again. Laying her cheek against his, she sobbed piteously. Yudhishtira stood near his mother, knowing their lives would never be the same again.
He said to his brothers, “We are orphans from today. It is fate’s will and we must be brave.”
But the younger children cried, and the rishis tried to console them. And now the strangest tussle began between Kunti and Madri: both of them wanted to commit sati on Pandu’s pyre. It seemed their argument would lead to an unseemly altercation, when the sages intervened.
The eldest rishi said, “You are not only wives, but mothers too. Your dharma lies not with your dead husband anymore, but with your sons who are still young and need you. We have decided to take you back to Hastinapura. You will find welcome from the people of the city, if not from blind Dhritarashtra. Your sons are born to rule the world, and you must watch over them until the future is secure.
“We have heard that evil has been born into Hastinapura, as Dhritarashtra’s sons. He may be a good man himself; but will he choose your princes over his own? Don’t speak of killing yourselves, when there is so much you both still have to do in this world.”
Kunti was mollified, and grew quiet. But Madri cried, “We cannot send our husband unattended into heaven. To be with him is our dharma, too. He died because of me, because he desired me more than his life. I cannot live without Pandu. I must follow him and make him happy.”
