Karna's Wife (3 page)

‘No, but she will choose someone at the swayamwara anyway,’ her husband reasoned amiably. ‘Invitations to almost all the kings and princely suitors have gone out. We haven’t missed any.’

‘Don’t you think it would be more appropriate if we knew whom she will choose instead of us playing this guessing game?’ persisted his wife. ‘If I know her well, she is likely to pick a boy whom I shan’t approve of at all! She has an uncanny habit of annoying me.’

‘Oops, don’t tell me she has fallen in love with that fat Dushasana! Now, that would be a very nasty surprise!’ said her husband playfully, but his queen did not look too amused. ‘She is more frank with you. Why don’t you ask her yourself? In fact, I had assumed she might have confided in you by now. Girls do fall in love, you know,’ she reminded him pointedly.

The King of Pukeya promised to be the responsible father and a conscientious interrogator.

Uruvi’s sheltered life had been a pursuit of perfection, but her privileged world sometimes thwarted her. Uruvi imagined she came close to it as she painted beautiful forms of nature, but then she longed for more. In Karna she had found an appearance and personality so close to perfection that she could convince herself that her quest had been fulfilled. That man from nowhere had created a tumult in her heart each time he had strung his bow.

As a young woman in love, Uruvi saw in Karna all the qualities of a hero who was not being permitted to be one. His flaws made him more interesting. At Hastinapur’s tournament when he had outdone Arjuna, he had been openly belittled as a charioteer’s son and deprived of his right to duel with the Pandava prince. As the King of Anga, he was the inglorious ruler, looked down upon by royalty and the princes. As a noble warrior, he was cast off for not being a kshatriya. As an eligible suitor, he was disgraced for being of a lowly caste, a sutaputra—as Princess Draupadi had pithily reminded him at her royal swayamwara. No, it was not very hard to fall in love with Karna, however unsuitable a suitor he was condemned to be.

This man seemed to be born in adversity. Uruvi stared pensively at the small portrait she had painted of him and kept hidden in her bedroom coffer. As his tales of gallantry washed over from one kingdom to another, so did his saga of misfortune as the blighted man with a legacy of low birth, a sutaputra. The story of his life was a fairytale gone wrong. He was a beautiful orphaned baby, with bewitching kundals (earrings) and a golden kavach (armour) to protect him, who had mysteriously strayed into a river and into the lonely lives of Dhritarashtra’s charioteer, Adhiratha, and his wife Radha.

The young Vasusena (or Karna, as he was better known, because of his sparkling earrings) nursed a smouldering ambition to perform and excel and earnestly believed he was destined for a better life. He did not wish to be a charioteer like his foster father, but a warrior, an archer. With this dream, the young Radheya, the son of Radha as he was also called, approached the best teacher of martial arts in Hastinapur—Guru Dronacharya—the guru of the Kauravas and Pandavas, but the guru refused to teach him because he was not a kshatriya.

Undaunted but deeply disappointed, he went to Parshurama, the guru of gurus in warfare and sought his blessings. Radheya soon became Parshurama’s best pupil and showed the world his magnificent skills from a very young age. At the Hastinapur archery contest he outdid Arjuna, the rising star of the Kuru dynasty and the kingdom’s most accomplished archer. But his moment of fame and credit crumbled when he was questioned about his birth and lineage. Once again, he was turned down for being a sutaputra, and had it not been for Duryodhana who in an unexpected burst of generosity had gifted him the kingdom of Anga, he would not have been what he was—the most formidable warrior in the country. Duryodhana had promoted the young sutaputra to royalty, transforming him from Radheya, the son of Radha, to Karna, the mighty warrior and the King of Anga.

Yet, pondered the princess, he was not allowed to bask in his well-earned glory. He was Karna, the King of Anga, the king with a crown of thorns, the king who was a sutaputra. He was a king not by birth, nor by worth. He would always be the sutaputra, the eternal pariah. And yet, she, Uruvi, the pampered Princess of Pukeya, loved this man most people treated with such scorn. It was easy to fall in love with Karna, Uruvi decided, but it was difficult convincing others about its judiciousness. She wished to wed him one day and if she dared to consider marrying him, she wondered what she was going to do about it. Or rather, how she was going to go about it. For one, how was she to get the discredited King of Anga invited to attend her swayamwara with the respect he deserved?

For the Princess of Pukeya, her father was her world. Though a kshatriya, King Vahusha was an eminent scholar as well, and in her quest to be like him, Uruvi found herself trying to learn mathematics and astronomy, the subjects her father excelled at. And it broke her heart and made her temper flare when she could not succeed. ‘Why can’t I get it?’ she would weep in furious exasperation.

‘Because you may be better at other things,’ her mother often gently told her, wiping the angry tears from her glistening cheeks. ‘Why do you insist on being like your father?’

Eventually, she had to accept that she could not be like him. She tried to be perfect in whatever she was good at, which was music and art. She was a natural artist, her strokes as well-defined as her sense of colour. Her love for nature blossomed and took her beyond the aesthetics of tints, shades and fragrance, leading into a scientific interest in plants and flora. She also grew to be an excellent horse-rider. Soon, she found herself going to the small gurukul (school) of Rishi Bagola, who opened a new, exciting world to her—that of Ayurveda and healing. She assisted him diligently in his work and learnt to listen carefully to absorb what he taught. While girls of her age were groomed to become dainty princesses, Princess Uruvi saddled her horse each morning to ride to the gurukul where she spent the day immersed in the world of medicinal herbs and other remedies.

Much to his disbelief, the rishi discovered that the child had a singular, unusual gift—that of healing. It was not just the sandalwood and herbal pastes that worked wonders on the soles of tired feet or on pulsating temples pounding with headaches. It was the cool, soft touch of her hand that worked marvels. Her fingers wove a relaxing spell as they rubbed into sickly skin and aching bones.

‘Don’t fret, O King, it’s not a passing amusement for her,’ the wise sage placated the worried father. ‘She has a unique ability that even she is unaware of. Don’t stop her from pursuing what she loves doing. It’s her passion and it’ll be her life’s work one day.’

And soon King Vahusha found his daughter entering decrepit tents near scarred battlefields, nursing the torn limbs and bloodied bodies of wounded soldiers. With a tender smile and a caring touch, the princess would be busy assisting the other nurses to tend to the injured and the dying.

‘Is this the fruit of war?’ she once asked her father disconsolately. ‘How can you feel so triumphant when you have hurt and killed so many? How can you gloat about your victory while trampling on other people’s lives? What is it—insatiability, egotism, or self-importance—that goads you to go to war?’ It was one of the few issues they furiously disagreed upon, and each time the father knew that his daughter, with her acute intellectual ability, had won the argument but lost the cause she was hopelessly fighting for. She loathed war and warlords and her father suspected that there were moments she hated being a kshatriya princess too.

Needing her father’s approval just as a parched shrub thirsts for rain, Princess Uruvi did not forget even for a moment that she should never fail her father.

‘If you push yourself so hard to please him, you’ll topple over one day!’ her mother frequently warned her with growing concern.

And now perhaps, that moment had arrived. Princes Uruvi knew she could not please her father this time, that she would fail him somehow. In her attempt to get her beloved as her husband, would she herself fall, bringing down with her the people she loved and the wonderful world she had lived in so long? Uruvi was full of despair at the thought of the hurt she would cause her family because she wanted Karna—yet, being Karna’s wife was now her only aspiration, the only aim that gave meaning to her life.

As soon as he entered his daughter’s room, the King of Pukeya sensed the tension. His otherwise vivacious daughter cut a still figure leaning against the carved column, espaliered with fragrant jasmine vines. Her effervescence seemed to have dried up. He watched her as she looked out unseeingly, the expression in her eyes reminiscent of that look of piteous pain when he used to leave for battle. He was uncomfortable with her silence. She seemed to have turned inwards, and the father in him was deeply moved.

‘Is the idea of marriage so revolting—or is it that you are in love?’ he gently asked.

Uruvi repressed her surprise at his perspicacity. ‘How did you know?’

‘Because a girl whose wedding is so near and is seen unhappily moping around could only mean that she is in love, my dear,’ he reasoned. ‘And because I can read you well enough by now. Who’s the lucky fellow?’ he asked heartily, hoping to lighten the strain.

She remained unusually quiet. Uruvi’s silence gave King Vahusha an uneasy hint of a gathering storm, of the squall threatening to deluge them. ‘If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, how can we solve your problem together?’ he remarked, using his pet line of persuasion whenever his little girl turned rebelliously sullen. This time, however, she remained unmoved and silent, her fists clenched tight.

‘I am waiting,’ he said cautiously, instinctively crossing his arms as if to protect himself from what was to come.

‘I want to marry Karna.’

There, she had said it finally; she heaved a sigh, her words wrenched out in a hoarse undertone. As he looked at his daughter with rising disbelief, King Vahusha’s world hurtled down on him. Shock stunned him into brief silence. He wanted to shout at her in fury, in frustration, in despair, but could summon only a feeble ‘No!’ It was a cry of anguish, his eyes burning, his wan face paler still with the dawning comprehension of what his daughter’s decision implied and the events it would set in motion. ‘Do you realize the consequences?’ he muttered in utter desperation. ‘Not for me, nor your mother, but for yourself. If you marry him, you will marry doom!’

‘I know,’ she said quietly, looking at him with gentle equanimity. ‘I know I love a man the world hates. I know I am hurting you and that I am asking far too much. And I know it’s all so hopeless. But I needed to tell you the truth. Father, I could never marry a person you do not approve of. But it’s also true that I cannot garland just any man at my swayamwara. For me, it is either Karna or no one. If I can’t have him, I would rather stay unmarried.’

‘Unmarried!’ her father scoffed in sudden anger. ‘You know that can never happen in the world we live in. Are you threatening me, child? Society will not permit me to keep you unmarried, nor will it allow you to marry a charioteer’s son. You can’t marry a half-caste. You wouldn’t be as crazy as that. You are a kshatriya girl—you
cannot
marry a sutaputra!’ he raised his voice and regretted his words the moment he uttered them. He realized with a sinking heart that his furious words would only impel his defiant daughter to become more rebellious.