THE MAHABHARATA: A Modern Rendering, Vol 2 (89 page)

Subhadra and Uttaraa wail, “Where is Abhimanyu?”

Dhritarashtra says in anguish, “Ten million men perished for my sin. How can I ever forgive myself? Where are they all now, who died such violent deaths? Oh, where are my grandsons?”

Gandhari adds her voice to the others. “No grief is as cruel as not knowing where our husbands and our sons are. No prayer, not all the wisdom in the world can cure the uncertainty and anguish we women feel.”

Kunti says, “Where is my Karna? I was his mother and I was responsible for everything he suffered and for his death. Now he is gone forever, who can tell me where?”

Dhritarashtra says, “Father, this is what torments us. Who has ever died and returned to the world to tell us that there is indeed life after dying? No one knows for certain.”

Vyasa shuts his eyes in dhyana. Silence falls on the company. After a short while, the rishi rises and says, “Come to the Ganga with me. You shall have an answer to your doubts.”

Away in the west, the sun is sinking and twilight falls over the world when they arrive on the banks of the sacred river. They bathe in her warm currents, worship the setting sun and come ashore. Vyasa remains standing in the Ganga, waist-deep in her flow. He begins to chant some resonant mantras in a primitive tongue. Like flights of birds they fly out from his throat and seem to glimmer everywhere through the twilight world. At last they fly over the river and plunge into her waters, setting them alight.

The Ganga takes silver fire. White waves rise as from a stormy sea; from them, a spirit host emerges and stands forth upon those waves between heaven and earth. Bheeshma is there and Drona. With them, are Karna, Duryodhana and Dhritarashtra’s hundred sons. Abhimanyu and Draupadi’s sons rise from the Ganga, down which their ashes floated so many years ago, Dhrishtadyumna and Shikhandi, Drupada and Virata, Uttara Kumara, Bhoorisravas, Jayadratha, Susharma, Bhagadatta, Shakuni and his sons and a thousand kshatriyas: like fish from a sea!

With these, is the teeming host that perished on Kurukshetra: ten million men, a generation of warriors. Those shining legions fill the river, the earth, the trees and the sky. Their bodies are lustrous, heaven’s grace is upon every man. They wear unearthly raiment and jewelry and enmity has vanished from their hearts. They are like brothers now, all of them. Elven gandharvas appear with them and sing their praise, apsaras dance for them upon the phosphorescent Ganga.

It is told Vyasa muni opens Dhritrashtra’s eyes for that night and he sees his sons and all the others, whom he had, indeed, never seen with mortal sight before. The place by the river is like Devaloka, where no fear or envy, anger or hatred can come. The living and the dead spend that night together, in joy.

At dawn, the legion dead vanish
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, leaving the river flowing serenely again. Vyasa still stands in it, worshipping the rising sun. He says to some of the women, who have also lost their husbands to the war, “If any of you want to be with your men, enter the river now.”

Some widows do so and by Vyasa’s power their bodies dissolve in the Ganga. They rise as bright spirits and are free. Deeply consoled, Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, Kunti and the younger women return to the asrama. The next day, the Pandavas also return.

The sons of Pandu give away the gifts they have brought and at last they come to Dhritarashtra and Gandhari and ask their leave to return to Hastinapura. The elders bless them, cling to them fondly, before saying farewell.

Kunti takes Yudhishtira aside. She has become more composed than he has ever seen her and says to him, “We may not meet again in this world. You must look after my Sahadeva: of all of you, I have always loved him the most. Even now, I can only think of him as a child. Bless you, Yudhishtira, my noble son. Rule long and wisely and God be with you. Go now, for my love for you impedes my tapasya.

They part in tears, Sahadeva the most visibly upset. Finally, they tear themselves away and return to Hastinapura. The Pandavas settle down again to the routine of their royal duties, which keeps them busy indeed. They have a kingdom to rule and not even in times of dharma was that an easy task.

Two years slip by and one day Narada arrives in Hastinapura, his face grave. Yudhishtira’s blood turns cold to see the look in the muni’s eyes. All the Pandavas are present in the sabha, so Narada launches directly into what he has come to tell them.

“When you left the forest, Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, Kunti and Sanjaya went to Haridwara. After Vidura’s death, Dhritarashtra increased his austerities ten-fold, subsisting just on air, with stones in his mouth and never speaking, until he was as lean and wild as you found Vidura. He roamed the jungle, with no fixed dwelling. Soon, all the other hermits of the forest worshipped him. The women and Sanjaya, also, spent their time in prayer and fasting. Gandhari only drank water, while Kunti took some every sixth day. One day, they were returning to their little asrama after a bath in the river, when they saw that a forest-fire had broken out around them. A stiff wind fanned the flames and they spread like light on every side. Birds and beasts fled in panic, as the fire swept closer.

Dhritarashtra cried to Sanjaya, ‘Run, Sanjaya! Save yourself, before it is too late.’

Sanjaya hesitated, but Gandhari and Kunti also cried, ‘Run Sanjaya and take news of us to the world outside. We are too weak to go with you. We will offer ourselves in the agni and find moksha.’

Sanjaya knelt at their feet and then ran for his life. Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti sat cross-legged, still as posts, facing the east. The fire burned the jungle down and Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and your mother perished in it
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.”

Yudhishtira falls where he stands. Sahadeva’s heartbroken cries ring through the sabha. Again and again, he calls piteously to his dead mother and Draupadi has to lead him away. The other Pandavas stand dazed. Narada tries to console them; Vyasa arrives and attempts to comfort them. But this is not a grief they will get over in a day, a year, or ever. They will carry it to their deaths.

Yudhishtira asks in a whisper, “What happened to Sanjaya?”

“He climbed the Himalaya and sits in tapasya. He has also become a sannyasi.”

The Pandavas and their women come to the banks of the Ganga, all of them wearing just a single garment. With them come all the people of Hastinapura and even many from the provinces of the kingdom. Setting Yuyutsu at their head, they perform tarpana for Dhritarahstra, Gandhari and Kunti. They return to the city to ritually perform the cremation rites for the three dead. On the twelfth day, purified by a fast and other vratas, Yudhishtira performs the sraddha and gives away bounteous gifts in the names of his uncle, aunt and his mother.

Slowly, the sons of Pandu learn to carry their newest burden of grief and they plunge themselves entirely, especially Yudhishtira, into ruling the Kuru kingdom. Now they are the elders in Hasti-napura and their greatest delight is watching young Parikshita grow into a handsome, brilliant prince: the very image of Abhimanyu.

BOOK SIXTEEN
MAUSALA PARVA 

ONE
RITUAL AT PRABHASA 

Thirty-six years pass after the war and they are peaceful and prosperous. Yudhishtira is king in Hasti-napura and his dharma pervades Bharatavarsha. Then, in the thirty-sixth year of his reign, the Pan-dava sees sinister omens all around him, like those seen before the war. Yudhishtira is certain some calamity stalks the earth, but he does not know what it is. Jackals and wolves howl in the city-streets at noon; kites, crows and vultures wheel in dense swarms in the sky. The horses and cows of Hastinapura are restive and hardly touch their feed.

Not only in the Kuru city are evil omens seen. They are everywhere, as if the earth herself has premonition of a tragedy more terrible than any other. Storms of fire spring up, with no obvious cause and lick down whole forests. Eerie meteors streak through the sky, by day and night. Unseasonal rains lash the earth and the sea rises in tidal waves and savages the shores of Bharatavarsha. The sun and the moon shine dimly, as if stricken by sorrow, they are wrapped in black haloes. Violent tremors rock land and sea and in Dwaraka, Krishna sees the omens
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and remembers Gandhari’s curse. He knows the end of the Yadavas is near.

The dwapara yuga was over on the tenth day of the war and for thirty-six years the pale kali has crouched, awesome and sinister, on time’s horizon: a Demon impatient to be loosed upon the earth.

Not as long as Krishna, the Avatara, lives in it, can the kali yuga claim the world. Krishna has a final task to fulfil, before he departs.

His Yadavas—the Vrishnis andhakas, Kukuras and the rest—are invincible. Even he has been hard-pressed to contain them, as a shore does a raging sea. Their hubris will be their undoing and Krishna knows their time has come. For his own time has come and if he leaves the world without destroying his powerful clan, they will overrun the earth. He knows that not men, why, not the Devas can tame the Yadavas of Dwaraka.

The omens are plain on the land, in the sea and the sky. In Dwaraka, only Krishna reads them clearly and what they portend. One day, Viswamitra, Kanva and Narada arrive with some other munis in the ocean city to pray at the temple of Pindarika. Deluded by fate, the Yadava princes decide to poke a little fun at the holy ones. They dress Krishna’s son, Samba, in some clothes borrowed from a fisherwoman in a nearby village and lead him, face covered, to the august rishis.

Mockingly, they prostrate themselves before the sages. One bold spark says, “This doe-eyed beauty has something to ask you, Brahmanas. She is too shy to ask herself and bids me speak for her. She is Babhru’s wife. She is pregnant and is anxious to have a son. Sages of vision, tell her if she will have a boy or a girl.”

The young men had expected a mild reproof, at worst and they are taken aback at the ferocity of the rishis’ response. His lips white, one of the wise curses them, “She will give birth to an iron club and that club will destroy the arrogant Yadava clan!”

Trembling with fright, the young men come running to Balarama. They tell him and not Krishna, what has happened: and there is, indeed, suddenly something growing in Samba’s belly. The same night, his stomach has to be incised and yields an iron club. Balarama has the club ground into powder and the powder cast into the sea, where it floats on green waves. Floating landwards with the tide, it settles fatefully on a blessed shore of confluence, at Prabhasa. That powder transforms itself into a shimmering pollen. Under the moon, the pollen grows with supernatural swiftness into a bank of silvery eraka reeds.

One perfectly arrowhead-shaped sliver of the club cannot be ground. Balarama thinks that, surely, a small sliver cannot harm the Yadava clan; he has that cast into the sea, as well. A fish swallows the sliver. The next morning, it swims into the net of some fishermen. While gutting their catch, they discard the piece of iron they find in the fish’s belly and it lies shining on a white, nocturnal beach, on a full moon night. An old hunter called Jara, abroad on his poach, spots the sliver. Jara is attracted by its perfect shape. He picks it up and fixes it to the head of his hunting arrow.

The sea swells in fury and lashes the marble walls of Dwaraka. The evil omens are out in the open, everywhere. Astrologers see cataclysmic syzygys in the heavens and Krishna, who misses none of the signs, is eager to leave the world.

One day, he says in his sabha, “Thirty-six years have passed since the war and it is time for Gandhari’s curse to take effect. We must go to Prabhasa, to seek expiation. Our ancestor Soma Deva found redemption at Prabhasa from Daksha’s curse; we might also find Salvation there, from Gandhari’s. Let our men prepare to travel to the place from where the Saraswati flows west.”

Krishna has a cousin, Uddhava, of whom he is particularly fond. As preparations get underway in Dwaraka for the pilgrimage to Prabhasa tirtha, one evening Uddhava comes alone to see Krishna. He kneels at the Dark One’s feet.

“Lord, I am frightened!” he whispers and he is shaking. “Krishna, I cannot bear to be apart from you. I see signs of doom all around us. I believe you mean to kill the Yadavas and leave this world yourself.”

Krishna raises Uddhava up and embraces him. “Uddhava, go to Badarikasrama upon Mount Gandhamadana. There, in the temple of Nara Narayana, you will find moksha. After I leave Dwar-aka, it will sink beneath the waves.”

He speaks to Uddhava, gently expounding the eternal dharma, as he had done for Arjuna on Kurukshetra. Finally, he gives him his own wooden padukas, the ones Krishna had worn for years. Hands folded, Uddhava walks around the Dark One in pradakshina; he kisses the Avatara’s blue feet, bathing them in tears. Laying a hand on his cousin’s head, Krishna blesses him to attain nirvana. Uddhava leaves on his final pilgrimage, not with the other Yadavas, but alone, in another direction, bearing the precious sandals on his head.

When Uddhava has left, Krishna goes into the temple that stands in his garden, beside the parijata tree he once took from Amravati. He stands in dhyana before the stone idol in that shrine, the image he had himself created for his father Vasudeva. With a thought, he summons two resplendent beings there. They stand before him as soon as he calls them, their bodies made of heaven’s light. One is Brihaspati, the guru of the Devas and the other is Vayu, the tameless wind.