MAHABHARATA SERIES BOOK#2: The Seeds of War (Mba) (17 page)

She sighed and shook her head. ‘It is for his own good.’ There was a tone to her voice that suggested that he could still back away and let her continue, and she might not consider the agreement broken yet. 

But he no longer cared. ‘Who are you? What sort of mother would kill her own newborn children? Eight years! Eight beautiful perfect young children. Sons! Why do you do this? Who are you?’ 

She paused and nodded. Turning around, she walked back to the bank and stopped just short of solid ground. Still on the water, she looked at him with the same loving expression he knew so well. ‘Very well then. Since you have asked, I must tell you. For I cannot lie, nor can I conceal truth once it is demanded of me. I am transparent as clear water, as the glacial Himalayan ice from whence I come, and to do otherwise would be to dishonour my father. Therefore I shall tell you the truth as plainly as possible.’

He could not make head or tail of what she said, except that she was offering to answer his questions. His confusion only made him more belligerent. ‘Tell me then. What sort of evil creature are you to do this terrible thing year after year? Answer me!’

A peculiar expression came over her face then, one that he had never seen, not even in her most vulnerable, naked moments. ‘I am Ganga,’ she said, ‘daughter of Jahnu.’ 

He stared at her, then at the river, then at the place where she stood, upon the rushing water. And he knew she told the truth. Everything made perfect sense then. If she was indeed Ganga, the river-goddess, then it explained how she could appear and disappear at will on the banks of the river, how she could walk upon its waters – for she herself was water – how she could be so passionate and tempestuous, as the river was, and numerous other half-glimpsed half-understood mysteries and doubts were cleared up at once. All save one. 

‘Then why do you do this terrible thing?’ he asked. ‘As Ganga, you are the most honoured of all maharishis, sacred river of the Gods themselves. How can you commit such a heinous crime? How could you kill your own newborn sons?’

She smiled. Tears sprang into her eyes and trickled down her face, and as she rolled down those smooth unblemished cheeks, he saw that the water was the reality and the flesh the illusion, for each teardrop erased the skin and body down which it ran. She was turning back to water again even as she spoke. ‘These were the eight Vasus, great demi-gods from the heavenly realms. Due to a curse by Vashishta, they were compelled to spend a year each on earth. They approached me and asked for my help. I agreed to take human form and give birth to them and to destroy each one at the time of his birth so that he could return at once to his true place in swargaloka. I was killing our sons, it is true, for I was destroying the physical bodies in which they took birth upon this plane. But by doing so, I was freeing their immortal souls which were never destined to remain here. If not by my hands, they would have died anyway. Better to throw them into my own waters for a quick merciful death, than for you and I to watch them grow for a full year only for them to die by some unimaginable unexpected method each time. Cruel as this was, and difficult for me to do – you cannot imagine how difficult – it still had to be done. It was the only way. Surely you can see that now, Shantanu, my love?’

He passed a hand across his face roughly. He was already drenched from the riverspray. His head swam with understanding and shock. A curse! A remedy. And each one a demi-god, herself a goddess. Then nothing was what it had seemed. All this was part of some cosmic plan that would have unfolded regardless. What she said was true: to live with each child for a full year and watch them grow, until their every action, expression, gesture and sound became intimately familiar, and then lose them…that would have been unthinkable. And to endure that eight times over? Impossible. He would have been driven insane, he was certain of it. There was a limit to how much anyone could endure. 

He rose to his feet. ‘I had no idea…’ 

She nodded. ‘I know. But it was impossible to tell you. As a mortal, I could not share such knowledge with you. It is forbidden. Besides, it was necessary for things to proceed exactly in this manner, for even this was part of the plan.’

He looked around, stunned. ‘You mean that even my protesting before the death of the eighth son was part of your intention?’ 

‘Yes, my love. For I wished you to have the pleasure of raising one son from my womb. And by testing your patience all this while, I knew that you would eventually stop me. Thus, I am now entrusting to you your lawful son, born of our union. Take him now.’

She handed out the newborn to him. Shantanu took the bundle of warmth and softness, scarcely able to comprehend what was going on. The child began to wail and cry, dismaying him further. 

‘He will be a great man, a great king. He will do great things and when he takes a vow, any vow, no matter how terrible, it will be as rigid and unyielding as the sky and the earth in resoluteness. He will do all he does for your sake and the sake of your kingdom and your lineage. He will do the Bharata race proud, and be a shining example of the Puru line. This is my last, my only gift to you, my beloved.’

And now her tears came faster and thicker, as her lower body melted away, turning into a whirlpool of raging water. Only her head and upper body remained recognizable as the woman he had loved for so long. In his arms, the child’s crying grew more plaintive and mournful. 

‘But I don’t wish to lose you!’ he cried. ‘Now that I understand everything, I forgive you! I didn’t know, my love. Do not blame me. Do not leave me.’

‘I must,’ she said, ‘for that too was foretold.’

‘Stay for the sake of our son,’ he said. ‘Stay and rear him with me.’

‘I cannot,’ she said, ‘stay another day in the world of men. Once even a single mortal knows my true identity, I must return to my original form. That is the dharma that binds me.’

He shook his head and held out the child again to her. ‘Then take him with you. Raise him yourself. Raise him like a god, a great being. His true place is with you, not on this wretched mortal plain. Let him not suffer the misfortunes of mortal living when he can live like a god among gods!’

She hesitated then dipped her head. Already, he could see, the back of her head had turned to water, only the face and ears remained intact. Her arms were melting too. She reached out hands that were more water than flesh and accepted the child once more. She cradled him to her watery bosom, and he gurgled as if content and fell asleep again. 

‘I shall keep him and rear him as befits your son and heir,’ she said. ‘When he is ready, I shall send him to you again. Thereafter he must live out his time on earth. Indeed he shall live a great length of time, for he has taken his brothers’ ages on earth upon himself as well. He shall live all their mortal lives in his own lifespan, and only by his own choice shall he eventually succumb to death, only when he has endured and suffered enough to atone for them all.’

Shantanu had nothing to say to that. He joined his palms together. ‘I am honoured to have been your mate in this world. I have loved you as I can love no other woman ever again. I shall remain without a wife for the rest of my life henceforth. For no other woman can ever take your place in my heart.’

She smiled sadly, her face melting away even as she spoke her last words. ‘Matters of the heart do not always turn out the way we plan, great Puru. As a man you may desire to live alone but as a king you owe it to your people to produce an heir. In time, you may learn to love again. Until then, remember, I am always here, always running beside you, as fast as you run, sharing in your every triumph and achievement. Come to me anytime you please. Except for that one limitation of the physical form, I shall always be your beloved Ganga forever.’

And with those terribly final words, she fell back into the river, the water spout that had been her body dissolving back into the body of fluid from whence it had come. 

9

Shantanu grieved for his lost wife and sons. The official word given to the people was that the Queen had dropped her child still-born and had taken her own life by flinging herself into the Ganga. This matched the rumours and gossip that had circulated for years and was in keeping with the Queen’s legendary love for the river. The people grieved with their king, for they had loved her dearly too. In time, they got over the loss and went on with their lives. There were enemies seeking to overthrow the might of the Purus and take over Hastinapura’s territories, there were great swathes of newly conquered dominions to govern, and the countless other duties of any king. In time, Shantanu too got over the loss of his beloved Ganga. From time to time, he went to the spot by the river and sat upon the bank as his father had once done, but instead of meditating he talked to the river, confident that the steady roar would prevent his words from being heard by anyone within sight. He spoke of matters of kingship and governance, of palace intrigues and political maneuvering, of skirmishes and rebellions, fights and outbreaks, all the usual things that kings talk about to their wives at night behind closed doors. The river listened and in its steady relentless roar he often thought he heard an occasional word or phrase or sound of commisseration, sympathy or even, on rarer occasions, a few words of advice. Once, when discussing a certain noble and his daughter who were needlessly haranguing the ministers with constant demands, he was taken aback when a face appeared in the water below him. The face was exactly that of his former Queen and wife, if it were to be formed of water. ‘Beware. They mean to assassinate you,’ she said in a watery gurgle that none but he could hear. Then smiled, pursed her lips in an action that resembled an affectionate kiss, shut her watery eyes, and melded back into the river. The following week, the noble and his daughter did indeed try to use a clever ruse as a cover for an assassination attempt – and failed because Shantanu had been having them watched constantly since the day by the river. 

In time his visits grew less frequent as the empire grew and his responsibilities increased. He admittedly threw himself more completely into his work and vocation than he had before, as if conquering new territories or suppressing distant mleccha rebellions in foreign lands could ever compensate for the loss of his beloved mate. They did not, of course, but they did help keep him from thinking as often of her. In his travels he found also that while the river was always benign to him – on more than one occasion, he was able to cross her in spate under impossible weather conditions, always to the astonishment of his own local allies in the region – the special bond he shared could only be explored in that particular spot on her bank, near his own capital city. At all other places, she would listen intently, but only here would she speak aloud or show herself in subtle deliciously feminine ways: a wave of butterflies risen from the water itself, dissolving to a cloud of spray as they rose up in the air, a pack of dolphins mating in the water within sight of him, patterns in the water that defied the tide and made pleasing designs that reminded him of places they had been and things they had done in those places. These intimate secret communications kept his heart alive and kept love awake within him. Even though he had long since accepted that he could never have her back again, the sheer glorious intensity of their years and experiences together kept him emotionally afloat for another decade and a half. If nothing else, these platonic dalliances kept him from growing bitter and indrawn and from hating the sight and touch of all woman. 

In time, gradually, he began to form the idea that perhaps, just maybe, someday, he might learn to love again. 

||paksha six||

the return of devavrata

1

Born of water, into water, the boy knew no other world. 

It would not always be thus. Someday, he had been told, he would leave here for another place. His mother had told him this, in a quiet time, her body swollen and expanded to its widest, spanning banks miles apart, trailing enormous skirts of silt. He loved her at these quiet times, when her icy mountain rage had mellowed to a somnolent trawl, flowing  majestically down to the ocean. She cradled him gently in a pocket of warm current, his belly filled, his heart content. He was little more than an infant then, still unable to forage for himself or wander freely on his own. As they drifted together, she said in her softest voice, “Devavrata.”

He looked up at her with round, expectant eyes. She had formed a face from the current, her gentle face. An errant trout drifted into the space behind her large rippling eyes, realized into whose presence it had foolishly wandered, and flicked its tail in panic, flashing away. He gurgled with amusement. Her water-sculpted visage dimpled its cheeks at him and playfully intertwined warm and cold tendrils between his toes and fingertips, tickling him deliciously. 

When his delighted laughter subsided, she continued. “My son, soon you shall have to go away from me.” 

Away. 

His little mind puzzled over the word, the idea.
Away?
he repeated soundlessly, and then wagged his finger in a familiar gesture. Less a specific question than the act of questioning, that tiny finger wagging translated into an entire range of universal, eternal, childish queries.
What is that thing? Does this have a name? Who am I? How did this happen?
Or his perennial favourite:
Why? 

“You will have to go to live with your pramaataamaha for a while.”

Again, the little finger wagged, and he emitted a gurgling babble, trying to imitate the sound she projected into his mind.
“Pramaa…maa?”
 

“Your great-great-grandfather. Our ancestor. From whose loins our lineage flows.” 

She paused, her watery forehead creasing as she pondered some minor disruption in another part of her sinuous length. Enclosed in her embrace as he was right now, conjoined with her own vast being, he could almost see through to the source of the disruption. A gathering of two-legs about a hundred miles downshore were sacrificing a bull on a stone slab at water’s edge, chanting ritual verses to his mother. He knew how much she disliked blood sacrifices, and his face pinched in empathy. He felt her shudder as the bull’s neck was hacked clean through with a bladed weapon sharper than the fangs of a longtooth, and red fluid gushed over the stone, melding with her own arterial flow. Her watery face began to freeze into that icy visage that terrified him, then subsided with an effort, as she reminded herself of his presence, and of how her last outburst had set him to howling uncontrollably in anguish. He felt everything: the white frothing of her anger, her swirling awareness of his closeness and sensitivity, then the slushing calming of her emotions. Yet even through the opacity of her self-control, he still could feel her pain at the senseless waste, her despair at the two-legs who foolishly thought that by taking the life of another living being they could enrich their own. He even sensed briefly her decision to wreak retribution—she would send a flood surging up the banks to wash out the dwellings of those who had planned the sacrifice—then her resolve shut him off, like a wall of cold ice floe cutting off a hot spring fluke. 

He tried to reach up to her face and comfort her, but of course, his stubby fingers touched only water. When he put the finger to his mouth—an action as natural and inevitable to him as breathing itself—it tasted salty. That intrigued him. But then she regained control of herself and smiled reassuringly, if sadly. “You are the iron in my blood, my son. But you belong to another world. To their world. Someday, you will have to go live among them. It is only meet that you prepare yourself. And I know no one better than your forebear to undertake the task. Listen well to everything he tells you, Devavrata. Learn well. The lessons he teaches you will echo down the hallways of history someday.”

Again, he made that little gesture:
Why?
 

She shook her head, the watery tendrils that stood in for her hair waving like reeds. “There is no answer to all your whys, little one. You shall understand when the time comes. Your mind is bright, brighter than all the fishes in my realm put together. You will do well under the great forebear’s tutelage. And after you are done, you will come back to me for a while. And we shall bask in warm tides again awhile, you and I, and you will tell me of the things you have learned, the places you have been, the sights you have seen.”

Places? Sights?

“Such wonders as even your salmon-quick mind cannot imagine. Because that is what learning is, child. An unending quest down an endless river course, gorging yourself upon wisdom and lore, until finally, someday, if you are good—nay, if you are very very good, and very very clever,” tickling him again and again, drawing a chorus of pleased chortles, “he may let you go down to that greatest treasure house of all learning, the repository of all the wisdom of all the ages, the place where even I must bow my head and deposit every last possession every day, in homage to the mother of us all, the mother of all knowing.”

And she whispered the word into his ear, her watery lips tickling him into a paroxym of giggling ecstasy. “Kathasaritsagara.”

The ocean of stories. 

2

Young and carefree as he was, the idea of parting seemed incomprehensible.  His life thus far, brief as it had been, had been idyllic. He was a prince of the river, and spent his days in childish abandon, traversing the course of his mother’s realm, doing as his heart desired. Everyone hailed him, even the sleepy-eyed longtooths and snapping-mouthed stonebacks who were each lords of their own stretch of the flowing world. All revered him, and many came to love him quickly and intensely; wherever he went, at all times, hundreds of watchful eyes kept vigil over him, and in the unlikely event of a crisis, a veritable army of quick silver fins and flashing teeth would come to his aid in an instant. But what could harm the son of the river in his mother’s own realm? He had no enemies here, and his mother made sure that his only potential rivals, the landlocked two-legs, were always kept far out of reach. He glimpsed them rarely, for his mother’s girth was prodigious, her depths not easily fathomed, and on those rare occasions that their paths crossed, he regarded them with disinterested eyes, forgetting them before they were out of sight. The river was his oyster and he its most perfect pearl. 

At times, such as the moment when he had sensed his mother’s anger at the sacrificial slaughtering of the bull, he thought of the land-denizens as crude, violent, brutal beasts without the elegance or intelligence of his fellow water dwellers. He hated it when they polluted his mother’s expanse with their offal, their refuse, or even their charred corpses, which they floated downriver at certain spots his mother called ‘burning ghats’. She seemed undisturbed by this daily pollution, even contented, and he came to regard it as some part of the natural way of things; in time, he even began to glimpse that they actually worshipped her, and that their consigning of their remains and materials to her flowing course were their way of honouring her. Still, he regarded them with a puzzlement tinged with disapproval.  

When the time came, he was playing with a group of young darkfins. He was old enough to clamber onto their backs, and clutch their fins, urging them to race through the bracing, high waters of his mother’s upper course. He loved clasping their slippery backs, feeling their powerful muscles seethe and cord beneath him, clutching those rubbery fins as tightly as his chubby little arms and hands and legs could manage. Even when one of the younger ones drove too fast, and he lost his grip and fell off, he was undaunted, laughing and chortling with ecstatic glee. He feared nothing; neither the boulders dotting the white water rapids where hapless land animals often dashed out their brains, nor the yawning abysses where his mother split herself into dozens of falls plunging thousands of fish-lengths to crash deafeningly in a miasma of vapour and sound. He went over the falls shouting his joy, knowing that no harm could come to him in his mother’s realm. Sensing also, besides, something of his true nature. The force that surged in his veins, calling out to and answered by his mother’s endless coursing, yet filled also with some greater power, a power he did not know the name of yet, but which burned fiercely within his blood. 

They had come through the rapids, down the falls, and were mulling about in the enormous marshlands where his mother tarried briefly before continuing her progress down the alluvial plains. The darkfins were darting craftily around him, teasing, touching him gently with their snouts. This was longtooth territory, and normally they would never come here. But they were with him, and he went where he pleased. He sensed the presence of many longtooth, dozing lazily on the surface of the marsh, on the banks, sunning themselves to awaken their sluggish blood. They bristled first at the presumptiveness of the darkfins invading their sanctum, then sensed his presence and yawned benignly, nodding a cursory greeting. A nilgiri stag, head bowed with a full crown of antlers, shoulders high enough to reach the lowermost branches of the highest sala trees, splashed through a shallow pool, almost stomping on an ancient longtooth. The ancient one ignored the challenge: the stag was in masth, and she knew better than to engage a nilgiri in that state. 

Then, the marsh, the surrounding woods, the river, the very cataracts themselves, pounding down with the frenzy of giant hammers, seemed to grow still. 

The darkfin nearest to Devavrata paused, his snout twisted to one side, tail turned the other way. The boy saw his fin ripple, as if sensing the approach of a great predator. But there was no predator here. At least none that dared attack a companion of the prince of the river. Nor could he sense any land dweller anywhere for miles around. 

He reached out to touch the darkfin, a young male named Youngslick on whose mother Devavrata suckled often, and with whom he shared a bond akin to bloodwater. 

Youngslick’s flank shivered. He raised his snout and issued a bleat in his high-pitched keening language. To Devavrata, just learning of the many moods and nuances of emotion, it tasted of fear and of something darker. An emotion beyond expression. It was reflected in Youngslick’s sudden thrashing of his tail, then the darting forward movement, followed by an equally vigorous backward push. Devavrata’s eyes widened as he floated in the pocket of warmth that always enveloped him, and he stared in confusion at Youngslick’s bleating bout of panic. Finally, a louder call echoed through the marshy byways, issued by Motherfin, the leader of the pack, and Youngslick grew completely still. Turning to glance at Devavrata, his dark eyes flashed apologetically. 

Until, he squeaked, in his cyptic darkfin way. And then flashed forward with astonishing speed that Devavrata, despite his own prodigious skill, could never hope to match. His tail flickered darkly through the sluggish marshy byways, heading toward the main body of the rivercourse, calling and answering the rest of his herd as he went.

For the first time in his short uneventful life, Devavrata was completely alone. 

3

Without warning, the warm pocket dissipated. He was left, abruptly, in the cold marshy effluent. He thrashed disbelievingly. Since his birthing, he had never known discomfort or deprivation; the cold water felt searing to him at first, like the runoff from a hot spring, then, his skin tingling, pulse racing, he began to feel the bone-deep chill permeating. It seemed to pass through his skin and flesh without resistence, seeping directly into his marrow. 

Maa!
he called frantically. She had never failed to answer him, even when embroiled in a crisis herself. For she was the river, and nothing could happen in her realm without her knowing. Yet as several moments passed and the freezing water continued to swirl sluggishly around him, and nothing happened, no response came to his call, he repeated his plea, louder, more fervently.
Maa, something’s happening! Come here, maa!
But she did not come, did not respond. He couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand what was happening, or more importantly to him, why it was happening.

He thrashed, losing heat even faster, dissipating his energy, and when, too late, much too late, he finally stopped flailing, the cold enveloped him in a tighter embrace than he had ever felt before. An invisible fist grasped his heart; icy shards pierced his brain, and he slowly lost feeling in the tips of his fingers and toes. Finally, he stopped struggling, and tried to outlast it, but nature took its toll: Heat fled his little body, and cold became his new wetnurse. By the time he lost sensation in his feet and hands, it was too late to act. Not that he could have done much; he had often seen the bodies of frozen creatures floating downstream like dead logs, never once dreaming he could end up thus himself. He had been warned often by his mother not to go too far North, but he was not that far North at all—this was longtooth territory, after all, and they craved the warmth. Somehow, instead of the omnipresent pocket of warm water that had cuddled him ever since he could remember, a pocket of icy cold Northern water now clutched him mercilessly in its grip. He had always been so well protected, the very idea of danger was beyond his comprehension. Now he learned both the shocking pain of a mother’s betrayal and the indifference of nature to its denizens.