The Thirteenth Day (3 page)

So, the lion falls, and the jackals swoop in. Bharatvarsha was in shock. The loss of Grandsire had given new legitimacy to our cause. Now that the war was tilting in our favour, the lesser kings of Bharatvarsha, the ones who were too timid to join us because of the might of the Kuru alliance, were ready to join hands with us.

I resisted the urge to dash off a response to my charming friends. A harshly worded message could have made new enemies for us. It was beneath my dignity to let these cowards, skulking in their palaces, grace the battlefield when all the hard fighting had been done by us. It was our fight. We would win this war alone, without any of their last-minute heroics.

My retainer Vishaka entered the tent and began to help me with my breastplate, silently unclasping the hooks around my back and shoulder. I removed my helmet and placed it on the bed. The cool air felt alien on my humid scalp.

In a weak attempt to lift my spirits, he tried making conversation, ‘I’ve heard Lord Bhishma fell today, sire. May I offer my congratulations?’

‘Congratulations? That’s my grandfather who was nearly killed today. On my orders. By my little brother’s hand. What exactly are you congratulating me for?’

‘I’m sorry, my Lord.’

I calmed down. Vishaka had been subject to far too many of my mood swings. On his part, he avoided provocation as much as humanly possible, did his chores diligently, kept my armour buffed and was handy with a massage too.

‘It’s all right, I didn’t want any of this…least of all to see my grandfather on the other side of the battlefield.’

He didn’t understand this.

Victory for him was a good thing that overcame defeat. Much like good and evil. Loss of life was but collateral on the field of battle for the greater prize, glory. But he didn’t say anything and simply nodded.

I removed my white linen tunic that stank of sweat and was dotted with tiny blotches of blood that looked like spots of kumkum. Vishaka prepared a poultice of haldi to clean my wounds. I had survived the day practically untouched. A spear had grazed my left arm and a couple of arrows had taken the great effort of piercing my iron breastplate to prick my skin ever so slightly. He began work and finished almost immediately. Pleased, I imagine, more for the speedy completion of the task and his potential return to idleness than his master’s unblemished vitality.

I wanted to take in the mood of the camp, so I dismissed Vishaka, picked up a sheepskin shawl and walked out.

The camp was a creature that only came alive at night. Much like the parijat flower that blooms only after sunset. It spanned ten yojanas from end to end with borders, demarcations and fortifications. Like a small township sufficient in itself with rows of tents in different colours each representing our various allies. If you looked down from the skies it would resemble a pretty, multi-coloured flower. In the centre, lay our Indraprastha contingent, the tents a regal deep blue. The camp lay deserted during the day with a gaggle of followers and retainers cleaning up behind their masters. If their masters didn’t return, the followers just packed up their master’s tents and went back home, or alternately sought employment with another Kshatriya. Many a time, it was suspected that they looted the personal effects of their dead masters and sold it off to other buyers.

I walked directionless, seeking a familiar face. I could hear the sound of raucous laughter tearing through the invisible fog of calm that every camp unwittingly but painstakingly creates on the night before battle. Apparently some of the men had forgotten that their friends had died today, choosing instead to focus on the day’s single positive outcome. Grandsire had instilled a rare kind of fear in our men. He was fairly good in his time no doubt; having defeated some of the fairly illustrious names of his youth, but was well past his prime now. It was no secret that Arjuna was a better archer. And so was Radheya. Drona was better if not at par, as were Ashwatthama, Satyaki and a number of other bucks making their future reputations. In the early days of the war, even young Abhimanyu had managed to make short work of him in a duel.

Among the people of Bharatvarsha, however, his reputation had assumed epic proportions, propelling him into the realm of legend. He couldn’t lift an arrow out of a quiver without some minstrel going into raptures about the unfortunate consequences of the act. Grandsire encouraged these little odes to his greatness and occasionally even asked poets and songwriters to compose verses to his victories, and to go about the land singing them in high notes of hyperbole. With every new telling, his enemies started to become more and more supernatural and his victories became magnified to the stature of miracles. This was his most subtle act of brilliance. Grandsire knew that battles were as often won off the field as on it. And he also knew that a fearsome reputation, coupled with a stern countenance, could intimidate any foe.

His renown grew to the point that kingdoms would accept defeat without even taking to the field, relieved at the thought of not facing Grandsire, the harvester of death, the Terrible One who could (I once heard) ‘shoot flame arrows from his eyes and fart tornadoes’. The thought amused me then, as it did in the dusty bylanes of our camp. An army of grown men quaking in their boots fearing a sexagenarian white beard who would have rather dandled an infant on his knee and played elephant to a tot’s mahout than lift a bow and arrow. Personally, I don’t think Grandsire cared too much for this reputation, though he went to great lengths to maintain it. For anyone born of this yuga, he would forever be the Terrible One.

Large spits of meat roasted in the open with enormous coal beds crackling in the sand beneath them. The spit turners sweated profusely, their muscled shoulders swinging rhythmically in the dust and night wind. The meat lumbered slowly around the spit while attendants massaged it with herbs and spices. A group of young soldiers sitting near a spit got on their feet and began chanting—Bhi-ma, Bhi-ma, Bhima, Bhima!

As was expected with men whom nature chose to endow with the bounties of spectacular physical health, Bhima was fairly conspicuous. He strode into their midst swinging his arms with the wild abandon that only the truly carefree rejoice in. A square, solid face tanned deep brown, riven by a thick black moustache that stood defiantly between his fleshy cheeks. Short, thick hair, pared almost to the scalp and big, liquidy brown eyes that bared his every emotion shamelessly, even when he wanted them to remain hidden. The eyes, however, were the last thing one noticed about Bhima.

Nearly the height of an elephant’s shoulder, Bhima towered over every human warrior on the battlefield. His upper body was wide like the trunk of a tree, sprung with black hair, but tapered almost anti-climactically into a slender waist. This odd, almost comic, triangular physique was a great source of pride to Bhima who attributed it to heavy physical exercise and a rigid diet which he enthusiastically recommended to his brothers; and forced upon at least one nephew till he was told to keep his notions of physical fitness to himself.

His anomalous girth had earned him many nicknames. The one that stuck was Vrikodara, wolf belly, since it is said that the bellies of wolves are always lean, no matter how much they eat. Affectionate stories had spread about Bhima maintaining this lithe dancer-like waist by restricting his appetite at every meal so as to leave some food for the rest of mankind.

I had heard from at least four different sources that he could lift a fully grown horse several feet above the ground and crush it in his embrace—a feat I had never seen him perform. His mastery over wrestling was already well documented across Bharatvarsha and he was unarguably one of the finest exponents of gada-yuddha—mace warfare.

Tonight, he celebrated with the troops. Not because he felt no love towards Grandsire, but because, if I knew my brother, it would serve to boost morale in the camp. Bhima was always more of team player that way. More than Arjuna, and more than Nakula and Sahadeva who kept conspiring between themselves.

He lumbered up to the nearest barrel of Sura wine, lifted it up coolly and quaffed it to the delighted roars of our hero-worshipping lads. A thicket of hands sprung up around him, offering him meat and mugs, and the clamour continued, rousing nearby soldiers from their slumber. Our biggest threat on the battlefield was dead (in a matter of speaking). If they didn’t celebrate this, God only knows what they would celebrate in the days to come, if they lived at all.

I walked up to him and ruined the moment for the soldiers. I was a curious figure in this camp. Most of the boys saw me as a statesman whom adversity had turned into a warrior. Most of the time, I was on the receiving end of a lot of sorry glances, which I soon learned to ignore. A couple of the boys even tried to help me on my chariot on the first day till a withering look sent them scampering.

After ten days of battle, the soldiers still didn’t take me seriously as a fighting man. Most treated me with an exaggerated formality stemming from pity.

I hated it.

And at times, I felt envious of Bhima, who could be both a leader and also ‘one of the boys’.

Vishaka once told me that there was a saying in our camp that Arjuna was the strategist, Dhristadyumna the organizer, but Bhima was the morale. The older soldiers had taken it upon themselves to explain this unique trinity to the newer ones in a less complex manner: if the army was likened to a human body then Arjuna was the brain, Dhristadyumna the belly, and Bhima (‘
our Bhima’
) was the very heart, because Bhima wept for all those who died under his command. He bled for the living too, putting himself directly in harm’s way to ensure the safety of the boys in his charge. The soldiers in the army looked at him with great reverence, so much so that it had become customary for every soldier to glance at him and his lion battle standard for good luck before the day’s battle started. When I asked Vishaka what part of the human anatomy the soldiers had ascribed to me in this fine metaphor, he told me that soldiers could be a crude lot and that some things are better left unsaid.

I placed my hand on Bhima’s shoulder. He tore his mouth off from the barrel and looked excitedly at me, ‘Ha! The war is ours now. This calls for a couplet, eh brother? What say?’

He cleared his throat and began loudly:

‘There once was an old grandsire

Who protected some Kaurava liars

With Grandsire gone

How will they go on?

And who’ll save them from my ire?’

The applause probably woke the sentries at the Kaurava camp. Drunk with success, and God knows how much wine, Bhima cleared his throat again, ‘Wait, another one! Another one!’

Bhima fancied himself a poet, composing little ditties and couplets to mark the day’s kills. A macabre misuse of intellect, but I wasn’t going to stifle his indulgences.

Dhristadyumna came to my rescue. His aquiline features, the pride of the house of Panchala, creased with worry. The exertions of the past ten days had cut lines into his forehead and cheeks that normally came at a more advanced age. A thick red scar ran down his eyebrow across his face to his jaw, the work of a Naga battleaxe heaved at him in the course of battle.

He smiled shyly at us and said in his soft, whispery voice, ‘Midnight council…my, er, my tent.’

Not a man of many words, my brother-in-law.

I
walked into our camp early on the tenth night. Grandsire’s words making spider webs in my head. The only good thing to come out of the old stick’s defeat and near death was that the day’s battle had ended early, giving the troops more time to rest and get over the shock. The camp was silent tonight. You could probably hear a moth fart.

Our camp was situated beyond the eastern edge of the Kurukshetra plain, occupying several yojanas. The sons of Pandu had taken up the western side. They had a better location, I felt, fed as they were by constant supplies on the Yamuna. The winds also moved in our direction, so the stench of carnage invariably bottled up in our camp. Hardly deciding factors in the current scenario, since our supply lines were still holding strong, and that is what really mattered, but there was no telling how long this war would go on. I borrowed a courier boy’s horse and rode hard towards the council tent in the centre of the camp. If I knew this army, they would have begun searching for culprits to blame before Grandsire’s body had even hit the ground.

We had started the war with eleven akshauhinis. The ancient texts prescribed that ideally each akshauhini was to maintain 21,870 chariots, 21,870 elephants and 65,610 cavalry supported by 109,350 infantry—a total of 218,700 soldiers divided into ten brigades of 21,870 each called ankinis. The brainchild of, no doubt, some arse of a nobleman wanting to make life difficult for the quartermaster.

While we tried hard to maintain at least 100,000 men in each akshauhini, both our army and that of the Pandavas was closer to around 80,000 divided into eight ankinis of 10,000 each. As men died and kings deserted us, it became harder to stay true to even these numbers.