The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata Read online

  We were invited to witness Duryodhana’s new skill, but the arrow whistled through the tree, disturbing a few leaves.

  When Arjuna stripped it off all its leaves with a single arrow, my father shrugged in pretended amazement and Duryodhana threw his bow down in fury. “Next time guard your mantra with your life. It may depend on it.”

  This did nothing to sweeten the relationship between Duryodhana and his cousins. Hardly a week passed without some encounter in which Duryodhana tried in vain to humiliate or outclass them. His hatred ran deeper and deeper into him, making him ugly and rude, and veiling the good in him. I often wondered then how it would all end, and so must our elders have done. But nothing definite happened until Duryodhana made his second attempt on Bheema’s life.

  At this point I have to speak about Duryodhana’s maternal uncle, Shakuni. “The Smiling One,” my father, who was not much of a smiler, used to call him. Shakuni seldom went back to his mountain kingdom. There must have been more discord to batten on in Hastinapura, though Arjuna used to say that the kingdom of Gandhara must have been full of it for him to have thrived so well.

  There was little of the warrior’s nature in Shakuni. Though he was good enough at archery, his weapons were his wit and his tongue. He was an intriguer and a gambler. He had all the worst qualities of a depraved Brahmin and a corrupt king, and the servility of the servant class to boot. He was part of Duryodhana’s darkness, jealousy and vanity, fostering the greed and encouraging his evil fantasies that lay like rotten fruit in Duryodhana’s heart. Since Shakuni saw from the day of our arrival that my father would be a favourite at court and that, being the husband of Shantanu’s adopted child, my mother Kripi, he would be a power in the land, Shakuni tried to lure my father to him. He asked me to call him Uncle Shakuni and gave me a gift of a gold cup with a family of swans embossed on it. I could never bring myself to call him Uncle as invited, and I knew from the beginning that it was Duryodhana’s great misfortune that he had to do so. Whereas Duryodhana could never hide his feelings, ugly as they were, they were almost honest and beautiful compared to Shakuni’s oily deceptions. He liked to play the benevolent, avuncular role, and one day organized an outing for us boys on the banks of the river Ganga. Shakuni liked his comforts and Duryodhana had a water sports palace built for the occasion. He boasted about this udana kridana for months. When we arrived on our elephants and in our chariots, we tried not to stare. It was a hot day and we had been dreaming of plunging into water, but we forgot when we saw the murals with their Apsaras and fishes and the outer and inner lotus pools. The spirit was refreshed and the body forgot its heat. Everywhere fountains rained sweet water. Water was what we had come for. There were five great swimming pools, and when we had washed and were swimming about, all enmity dissolved. I have often thought that water is the element in which it is most difficult to sustain grudges. Bheema and Duryodhana played water ball on the same side. I was in the other team with the Eldest and I saw them laughing and punching and ducking each other. That was the last time I ever saw Duryodhana laughing and at ease with Bheema. Shakuni watched them from the pool’s lapis lazuli edge. Only his mouth was smiling. The eagles that fly high in the mountainous regions of Gandhara must glare down on their prey like this, I thought. An attendant waved a peacock feather fan above him. When the ball flew over the pool’s edge, he would get up and throw it, calling a name jovially, but never Bheema’s. Why waste his time on someone who would be dead by nightfall?

  At the end of the day we had oil baths and were massaged, and changed into new white garments. My father had instilled in me the need to observe daily rituals, so I went off by myself and chanted slokas as the sun went down. It had been a pleasurable day, with less quarrelling than usual, but with a strange undertow. I sat watching the river darken and the trees go black. I closed my eyes and murmured the invocation to peace.

  SHANTI! SHANTI! SHANTI!

  Peace be to earth and to airy spaces!

  Peace be to heaven, peace to the waters,

  Peace to the plants and peace to the trees!

  May all the gods grant to me peace!

  By this invocation of peace may peace be diffused!

  By this invocation of peace may peace bring peace!

  With this peace the dreadful now I appease,

  With this peace the cruel I now appease,

  With this peace all evil I now appease,

  So that peace may prevail, happiness prevail!

  May everything for us be peaceful!

  Peace descended into me gradually and I sat alone for a long time savouring it, before walking back along the bank towards the palace lights, carrying my peace with me. The feasting had started some time back. I longed to share my mood with Arjuna, or to be in the presence of Yudhishthira’s grave modesty. But Duryodhana and Dhritarashtra employed my father; I would have to share my time equally with all.

  I found the cousins feasting. Bheema and Duryodhana were sitting together, popping choice morsels into each other’s mouths. This was something I’d never seen before.

  Great dishes of curd and rice preparations, and delicately seasoned meats were passed around. Bheema, as was his habit, ate everything that was placed near his mouth—and more.

  Shortly after dinner Bheema stood up, belched, stretched himself hugely, yawning. He threw me a glazed overfed look as though unsure where he was. He allowed a servant to pour water over his right hand, lifted the tent flap back, and relieved us of his bulky presence. I had never known Bheema to be the first to get up from a meal and guessed that he had suddenly got bored with Duryodhana. I myself had the misfortune of sitting next to Duhshasana, Duryodhana’s next brother, a gross personage for whom I could not control my repulsion. I had eaten heartily and slipped out for air. When I returned, Bheema was missing. We searched for hours.

  There was a bustle of servants and lights and shouts of “Bhheeemmmaaaa”. Duryodhana and Shakuni made a brief show of standing around with lights, but they did not go near the water. The echoes rose and lost themselves in the sky or sank into the pools. Suddenly, as though at a given signal, the shouts stopped: chariot horses could be heard neighing, snorting, and pawing the ground. The water lapped softly and a night owl hooted. Duryodhana made a sign to avert evil. I myself shivered.

  It was with the distraught Yudhishthira that I rode back to Hastinapura, hoping that Shakuni might have been right and that Mother Kunti would be serving Bheema with her own hands as she always did, but though the bit about eating seemed plausible, Bheema would never have left Yudhishthira anxious and desperate like this. The brothers all made a great show of not being worried in front of Mother Kunti. They pretended that they had left Bheema sleeping off his massive dinner on the banks of the river, but she knew.

  It was Vidura who comforted us all in the next few days. He reminded us over and over again that it had been prophesied that the five brothers would live long and that, no matter what the attempts on their lives, they would survive. Sahadeva lent weight to this by calculating astrologically what Bheema would be doing in ten and twenty years’ time.

  Though everyone pretended to believe, we never hoped to see Bheema again until, true to the astrological predictions, Bheema strutted into the palace half naked, very elated, and looking twice as vigorous as usual, claiming that he had been with Vasuki, King of the Water Serpents.

  When Bheema had finished eating three or four hearty meals, he told us what we had indeed suspected. Duryodhana had popped the fatal kalikuta poison into his mouth and he had become drowsy and walked down the river to refresh himself with a swim. Duryodhana’s servants had bound him up and thrown him in, trusting that the deadly water snakes would finish him off. But the water snake poison had an antidotal effect on the kalikuta and he regained semi-consciousness. When he had had enough of the sharp stings, he began killing the snakes, trying to escape by swimming deeper. They twined themselves around him and dragged him before their king Vasuki.

  According to Bheema, he and
Vasuki immediately became fast friends and Bheema was offered a bowl of Vasuki’s strength-imparting poison which, it is said, contains the might of many elephants. Bheema said the kalikuta made him thirsty and he downed eight bowls. The next thing he knew was when he opened his eyes and realized that he had woken on the bank of the river within sight of the Water Sports Palace. He had dived into a pool, then eaten the remains of the feast which he found in one of the kitchens, walked back to Hastinapura, and now demanded more food and made us feel his muscles.

  9

  Life did not change outwardly, but now, though we all knew what Duryodhana, backed by Shakuni, was capable of, we were careful not to show it. The Pandavas stopped dining with him. They kept as much to their own mansion as possible, and it was Mother Kunti who served them their food.

  Our training progressed. My father was inspired by Arjuna, and Arjuna developed devotion for and gratitude to him. The archery classes became principally a theatre for the games and play between Arjuna and my father. Not that I was not good, but then everybody expected me to be. My father had already taught me many things by the time we arrived, but Arjuna was a fanatic about archery in the way my father himself was. He never stopped practising; he got up in the middle of the night to practise in the dark and it was not long before Arjuna outstripped me. I would have minded greatly if it had been anybody else. My father, who was not a demonstrative person, now suddenly became merry and affectionate with Arjuna and with me too. I had not known him so happy. I think there were times when he even forgot the revenge for which he was training us all and simply enjoyed the thrill of being the greatest teacher in the world to the greatest pupil in the world.

  One day, while bathing, my father stuck his arm near a crocodile’s mouth. The crocodile was submerged and may have been sleeping. He was probably startled when my father shouted, and he opened his mouth to devour the arm. Before any of us had even registered the word “crocodile” or sensed danger, Arjuna had sent several of his sharpest arrows into the water, which now showed an ever-deepening pink trail as the beast moved away and then sank in the middle of the river. We had all known that at any moment, even when coming out of deep sleep, Arjuna could send an arrow exactly where he wanted it to go, and this was just one demonstration of the extent to which he outclassed us. By the time I had an arrow out of my quiver, I knew it was Arjuna’s crocodile. It was in fact also Arjuna’s Dronacharya from that day. Duryodhana in his disgust did not even pretend to send an arrow; he hated competing with Arjuna in archery. I do not know to this day whether the crocodile incident was a put-up job, or whether my father taught Arjuna the Brahmasira astra as a reward in exchange for his life. But it is the mind that reasons thus. Wisdom says that it was time for Arjuna to learn it. I had thought that my father who had it from the great Bhargava would never teach it to anyone but me. He had once said that it was not for hot-headed Kshatriyas, for it is the Great Spell and is only for the protection of the world from those possessed by demons who run amok among mankind. If it is used on personal enemies, it destroys oneself and the whole world. That my father deemed Arjuna worthy of its knowledge compounded my love for Arjuna. For a few days after he had received the Brahmasira he spoke little and I knew how he felt. It takes one some time to remember that the destruction of the world and the protection of the righteous is the business of the All Creator.

  Late one afternoon, when my father was feeding the fish in the pond in the garden of our mansion, a shadow moved out of the bushes to fall at my father’s feet. Both figures were in the broken shade of a frangipani tree and half hidden by foliage. The prostrating shadow almost melted into my father’s feet. I was sitting on the verandah and began to sense, as the obeisance continued, that I was intruding. There was a silent and secret initiation in it; an invisible fluid passed between the two figures. At last my father bent down to draw the supplicant up by his elbows; I saw the regular profile of a dark young boy. He would not get up but remained on his knees with hands folded, his face turned up to my father’s. I could hear his voice pleading, but not the words. Then I heard my father’s voice, gentle and consoling as it seldom was when refusing something, but he was refusing. The boy remained kneeling with folded hands, his shoulders hunched; his chin had fallen to his chest. He made another endless prostration with his head on my father’s feet, his hands clasped around the ankles. My father seemed prepared to stay as long as the boy might want to be at his feet. Finally, when the boy drew away, it was like a part of my father’s substance detaching itself.

  My father was loved by his students, but this devotion surpassed Arjuna’s. The strange boy left; my father stood rooted. After a while, with a sowing motion, he flung something into the bushes, crumbs for fish.

  I was still on the verandah when he came back to the house.

  “Who was it, Father?” He stood dead as though struck from behind. I felt his mind dart away from a stunned silence and I thought he would not tell me.

  “I thought I recognized his face,” I lied.

  “Ekalavya, son of Hiranyadhanusha,” he said abruptly.

  “Ekalavya, son of Hiranyadhanusha? He was asking you to be his Guru?”

  My father sighed. He could not accept a tribal disciple even if he were the son of a Nishada chief.

  “I could have made a great archer of him.”

  “Greater than Arjuna?” I asked, thinking to make him smile. My father had promised to make of Arjuna the best archer in the world. The idea of a rival to him was new and exciting. I resented it, but it intrigued me, and also I wanted to prod my tight-lipped father into speaking.

  “Much.”

  I thought he was boasting. Perhaps he dreamt of an army of Arjunas to lead against King Drupada.

  “Could you not have taken him on with special permission from Greatfather?”

  “Our young princes would make him miserable. They would not accept him—and then there are political considerations, you know. Bheeshma permitting us to send back such an archer to train up a whole army for his father Hiranyadhanusha? Not likely; we train our possible allies and that is risky enough.”

  It made sense, but my heart was pained at the thought of the Nishada boy walking all the way to the city and having to return to the forest with shattered hopes. I could still see his tear-stains on my father’s feet.

  For many evenings I thought his shadow flitted in the garden, but it was months before I saw him again and in broad daylight.

  We had gone out on another of those famous picnics Duryodhana was fond of organizing. This time the Pandava brothers took great care not to partake of food from his kitchen and all our minds were busy working out the ways in which Duryodhana, or rather Shakuni, might have devised to wreak their mischief. There was no river this time. We had gone far into the forest and there were no ashrams within hearing distance. I liked the deep silence without even the gurgle of a river and though I had promised myself to keep alert, to guard the Pandavas, I was lulled by the silence. Great trees threw shifting shadows and the birds flashed in and out of their gloom. Bheema, at his most exuberant, egged us on to competitions and dispelled the anxiety we felt for him, but during the long and heavy meal, the tension was palpable. We were all watching each other. Afterwards, while sifting leaves through my hands, I wondered whether I would have been so happy to leave the forest if I could have foreseen where it would take me. Today at least I would have been happy with a little cereal. Fresh water would have pleased me better than wine. I was still greedy for curds and was trying to imagine what life would be without them when the furious barking of Raja, Yudhishthira’s dog, filled my ears. I sprang up, but Arjuna was already moving towards the sound, signalling his brothers back, and Bheema and I ran behind Arjuna. There was a yelp of pain and then another. We picked up speed with Arjuna well ahead. The sudden silence was worse than the yelping. Anyone wanting to kill Bheema might decoy him by killing Yudhishthira’s dog. Bheema was lost in the trees.

  “Bheema, stop, Bheema!”


  I had, in this silence, lost my sense of direction. I heard Bheema’s long melodious whistle, but no responding bark from Raja. Suddenly a longsnouted Raja dashed out of the gloom like a ghost of himself. I followed and was led to Arjuna and Bheema. The dog ran a circle around Arjuna and then made for Bheema; his forepaws went up on to Bheema’s chest. We all stared in disbelief. The dog’s mouth was locked tight by an intricate and symmetrical pattern of arrows, behind which were sealed the dog’s great tongue and furious bark. His eyes rolled and he ran from one to another of us. We petted and pulled at the shallowly embedded arrows. They were not meant to kill or wound but simply to silence. In moments we had them out and, with the dog leading us, set off into the trees. I followed, thinking that I knew these arrows: they bore the guinea fowl feathers that forest tribes often used. When we came face to face with a dark handsome boy dressed in a leopard skin, I knew the arrows were Nishada arrows, though I had seen Ekalavya but once, at dusk and from a distance. My father had not boasted. Bheema raised an arm to fell him; I sprang between them. He pushed me aside. Then Arjuna had hold of Bheema’s arms and was reminding him that Yudhishthira must decide on the boy’s fate. The Nishada boy refused to answer questions and we led him back to the picnic site. Greatfather and Dhritarashtra were both in Hastinapura and the right thing would have been to bring him to my uncle Kripa, the senior member of our party; but he made straight for my father and fell at his feet again; and again his whole being was bent in surrender. His tears ran down my father’s insteps. Guru and disciple remained silent and unmoving. At last my father spoke in his gentlest voice, indeed in a voice I had never heard before.

  “Who are you, my son?” Still kneeling, the boy raised his head and looked up, his face rapt with devotion.

  “I am your disciple, Ekalavya, the Nishada boy.” There was a restrained snigger from Duryodhana. Shakuni knew better than to antagonize my father, though he had less respect for him than his nephew did. His prejudice was political and Duryodhana’s arose from jealousy.