Karna's Wife (18 page)

One late morning he found her looking piteously pale as she lay down in bed.

‘Are you unwell?’

‘No. I am pregnant,’ she retorted as blood rushed to her cheeks.

He couldn’t believe his ears. He stood still for a long time, staring at her with a happy disbelief, and then swept her into his arms.

‘Oh, Uruvi!’ he sighed, holding her close. She looked up at his face, his eyes shining with joy, his smile wide and warm. ‘Why the excitement? It’s not the first time for you!’ she teased.

‘It is the first good news after such a long, long time,’ he replied fervently.

For five days, Karna did not leave Uruvi’s side, and for those five days and five nights, he thought of Uruvi and the child she would bear. He was worried. Nothing seemed to be going right. He was having a trying time keeping Duryodhana calm after the fiasco at Indraprastha. He was thirsting for revenge—and Karna was aware that the Kauravas were hatching a plot though he was discreetly kept away from the hushed meetings between Shakuni and his nephews. Not that he cared but he was sure something dire was afoot and they did not want to include him in their plans. Karna grew restless; why did Duryodhana not confront his cousins and finish the feud once and for all? He could not understand the deceit and subterfuge—he loathed it.

He looked down at the sleeping form of his wife by his side. There were times when their arguments got too tempestuous and Karna knew it was because of a certain external factor—Duryodhana. She seemed gripped by some inner fear that Karna had not been able to understand. Since they had returned from Indraprastha, Uruvi’s vivacity had sobered to a strange sullenness. She had often been moody, sometimes morose and petulant. But the baby in her womb had swept away all that.

He knew he had her love. And it made him feel happier than he had ever felt in his life. He wanted to take her in his arms, to stroke her hair and kiss those tear-stained eyes whenever she cried furtively, hoping he would not see. He wanted to comfort her, wanted her to smile at him and to see those deep, flashing eyes sparkling with mischief and mirth. When he was with her, he felt happy and calm; the adoring affection he saw in her dancing eyes always touched him. On an impulse, he bent his head to give her a long, lingering kiss. Drowsily, she returned his kiss and slowly woke up, rising to his passion. He took her small face in his hands, ‘You are soon going to be fat and clumsy, little woman. But I can’t help loving you,’ he muttered thickly.

A wave of passion swept over her, and she was moved by the raw fervour in his voice.

She gave a shaky laugh, ‘I can’t think what it is I see in you.’

He chuckled. She took a childish delight in puncturing his ego and it was a characteristic answer.

One afternoon, Karna left for the Hastinapur royal court as Duryodhana had urgently asked for him. Uruvi impatiently waited for Karna to return—she had never needed him so badly.

She resented Duryodhana for meddling in their lives in the insidious way he did. She had learnt to live with it, yet she could not suppress the prickle of annoyance or the stab of absurd fear whenever Duryodhana called for Karna. She knew that she was expecting the worst. She retraced her steps to her chamber with a vague feeling of foreboding, a queer formless dread of something about to happen.

She could not have guessed, or never could have imagined, what that something was going to be.

When that day dawned, it was deceptively calm. Everybody went about their work as usual and Uruvi was unaware that this day would bring one of the most decisive moments of her life.

In the late afternoon, her maid came rushing into her room. Her frightened expression struck terror in Uruvi’s heart, and when the maid told her the news, she quivered with shock. King Yudhishthira and the other four Pandavas had been invited to play a game of dice at Hastinapur. Playing against Shakuni, who had resorted to trickery by using loaded dice, King Yudhishthira had lost badly. In desperation, he lost game after game, gambling away his entire kingdom, his wealth, his army, his four loyal brothers and even his wife, Queen Draupadi in a series of gambits to retrieve one by staking another. Worse, when Draupadi was gambled away, the unthinkable happened. Karna had encouraged Duryodhana’s brother Dushasana to drag Draupadi into the court and disrobe her. Having won her in the game, the Pandava queen became the property of the Kauravas, right down to the clothes she was wearing. Announcing this with a leer, Dushasana had attempted to strip the weeping queen in the large hall with everyone, including the elders, looking on helplessly. But amazingly, a miracle happened, for as Dushasana unwound Draupadi’s sari, it seemed endless, stretching into expanses of cloth—until, at last, the exhausted Kaurava prince gave up, despairing at the never-ending length of the sari.

‘The Pandava queen had fainted but it was the Almighty who saved the poor woman from the wicked Kuru princes,’ sniffed the maid, in righteous indignation.

The maid rattled on with all the lurid details of the shameful event, and Uruvi was in shock. Her legs gave way and she sank to her knees. She felt drained. She wanted to scream but a wordless shriek choked her. This is the start of the finish, she thought. The obliteration, the end, she registered dully in her mind, and closed her eyes in despair. A tear slid down her cheek, but she wiped it away determinedly. She shook herself as she waited for her husband to come back. She needed all her strength, she needed all her calm. And never had the wait been so long, so wretched, so painful. But it gave her time to get a hold on herself and weigh the situation.

She did not hear Karna return, but sensed his presence late that moonless night. The palace was silent; his footsteps as soundless as the prevailing stillness. The room was dimly lit when he entered their room. He gave a start when he saw her, awake and sitting up straight.

‘Are you feeling unwell?’ he sounded alarmed. She heard the note of worry in his voice. She forced herself not to think of the tenderness in his query; his concern swept over her, leaving her even more distraught. She held on to herself to stop herself from crying.

She bit her lip and said evenly, ‘I stayed awake to let you know that I shall be leaving for Pukeya tomorrow morning.’

‘For how long?’

‘I don’t want to stay here. I am leaving you. I just wanted to let you know my decision.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know what I am talking about,’ her voice was icy. ‘I am talking about the devious plot, the game of dice that you helped devise with your friend Duryodhana to usurp the Indraprastha throne. It shows that you are as conniving as he is. I am talking about how Draupadi was so shamefully dishonoured at the palace. Do you want me to go into the details or would you be courteous enough to spell them out yourself?’

He looked at her in mute anguish.

Rage leapt to her throat. ‘Tell me, Karna, in your own words what happened there. How you instigated Duryodhana to drag Draupadi to the hall. How you encouraged the Kauravas to strip her. How you called her a whore. How you watched shamelessly as Dushasana pulled at her sari. How you were the hero?’

Her fury rose, her words knife-like, ‘Did it make you feel proud, great warrior, to pull a woman by her hair and haul her through the royal hall? Did it make you feel proud, great warrior, to strip her of her pride? Did it make you feel powerful, great warrior, to disrobe her? To deride her as a prostitute? Did it make you feel happy to hear her beg and weep? What sort of a man
are
you?’ she cried. ‘How could you do what you did? How could you say that as a wife of more than four husbands, she is nothing but a “whore”? That the Pandavas were like sesame seeds removed from the kernel and she should now find other husbands?’

Karna’s lips tightened a little but he kept quiet. His silence incensed her further. ‘How can you be so complacent, so pleased with yourself, seeing everything? How can anyone be so shameless, so depraved? Answer me, damn you, answer me!’ she shook his arm violently.

Karna stood still as her words poured over him like lava. His eyes tortured, he turned away from her.

‘I want you to speak out! Talk to me! Tell me how you could behave so shamefully!’ she wept, in pain and in wrath.

‘I have no answer,’ he said at last. ‘I have no explanation. I cannot justify myself.’

‘What do you mean you cannot justify yourself?’ Her voice trembled in cold fury. ‘If that is so, your whole life is a pretence, a lie. You talk about dharma, but what sort of righteousness is that which cannot rise above your wrong sense of obligation to your friend Duryodhana, knowing fully well that his evil intentions have no limits? You are so fixated about your negative status and low birth, and yet, it prompted you to call Draupadi a harlot; it instigated you to order her to be stripped. You are deceiving yourself if you think you are this kind, good and noble person when you are not! You never were! You are as despicable as Duryodhana and Dushasana. It is not Yudhishthira but you who lost everything at the Hastinapur hall. You have given away everything, all that you were proud of, all that you were so righteous about. You have let yourself down, you have let me down, and you have let all of us down! It was my fault. I set you up on a pedestal, thinking you were the best of us. You were nobler, braver, wiser and better than everyone else. But you weren’t, were you? You were none of all that—you turned out to be just a contemptible cad!’

Karna flinched. His breath came out in a dry, swift gasp. ‘I will not defend myself, for what I have done is disgraceful. Yes, I have been a brute and a beast and done the lowliest thing possible. I hate myself for what I did. And I know it’s been terrible for you. It was endless madness! It was as if something within me broke the moment Yudhishthira staked Draupadi and lost,’ his voice rose in passion. ‘And I recalled Draupadi as she was at her swayamwara—hateful, haughty and taunting. I remembered how her words hurt me and I think I went completely crazy after that. All my loathing for her welled up in me and I was beside myself…yes, it was me who instigated the Kauravas, telling them that Draupadi be brought to the hall. Dushasana did what I had told him to do. He dragged her by her locks and threw her across the floor. I watched—and, yes, I felt elated. That mad jubilation drove me to do more…I wanted her to be humiliated the way she had publicly shamed me in front of all those kings. I wanted her to suffer the same ignominy, that same indignity. And then I said those terrible words. I called her a whore, I called her a woman available for all!’

His voice was dead; his eyes closed tight in agony. ‘Uruvi, believe me, it was the immense hatred that made me insane for the moment, and the moment went on and on and on. And I was enjoying it like a sadist does. I wanted her to beg for mercy and turn to me for help. But she did not,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘She looked at me with pure contempt and that made me more angry…so I told Dushasana to pull at her clothes. Oh God, I said it, I said those terrible words!’ he groaned. Defeated, he fell to his knees, his face tormented. His features were twisted in misery. For her, it was horribly painful to watch his abandonment in grief, the shame on that beautiful face.

Was it passionate love he felt for Draupadi, or was it passionate hate? Uruvi wondered bleakly. It seemed to her that there was a fine line between love and hate. ‘I loved you, God knows how much I love you,’ she heard herself say, the anger suddenly spent, swallowed now in an engulfing pain. ‘For years, I have worshipped you. You were everything to me. I believed in you. You were my god,’ her voice broke. ‘But now, after knowing what you did, and what you are capable of doing, I am shattered. I have died a little today, Karna. It is like you twisted my heart out and crushed it. You killed me. You have killed my love for you. And now I believe in nothing; neither in you nor in me.’

He did not answer, the colour draining from his face. Slowly, his handsome features began to crumble, distorted in grief. ‘Forgive me, forgive me,’ he whispered brokenly. ‘Oh, Uruvi, allow me to forgive myself.’ His eyes, appealing and bright with unshed tears, sought hers. And then the tears fell, pouring down his face. He came towards her with his arms spread as if in surrender and fell heavily on his knees. ‘Help me absolve myself, Uruvi. God help me!’ Sobbing, he tried to hold her close, weeping unrestrainedly. The self-abasement of a noble, dignified man was demeaning, yet moving, stirring emotions she had promised she would not allow herself to experience.

‘Don’t, Karna, don’t!’ She pushed him away.

‘Don’t go. I love you too much. I was wrong. I acted unethically.

And I sinned. So help me.’

For Uruvi, his obvious torment was unbearable to look at, but she steeled herself.

‘No, Karna, you cannot make me change what I feel for you now. I cannot forget what you did. I can’t! I
can’t
. I can’t bear you touching me. It’s odious! It’s like you actually touched Draupadi yourself and ravaged her!’ She saw him flush deeply. ‘No, I can’t bear it! My mind is quite made up. I have thought it all over so much that I am exhausted. I have been brooding since I got the news, and all I have felt is repulsion. She’ll always be there between us,’ Uruvi came out with what she was struggling to say. ‘Oh, it’s loathsome. I think of you looking at her with that angry lust in your eyes. It’s so physical, it’s degrading!’ She clenched her fingers in agony and her voice was getting shrill. ‘I can’t make myself forgive you. I have tried. Let me go, I beg you, don’t make me stay…’ Her heart thudded wildly, the pain almost unbearable. The tears she had restrained so long flowed copiously and she wept broken-heartedly. Karna went white; he had never seen her cry so openly before.