Five Angry Women: 4

Five Angry Women is an attempt to look at certain events in the Mahabharata from the standpoint of some of its central female characters, all brides of the Bharatas – Gandhari, Satyavati, Ambika, Kunti and Draupadi. These women are all angry – angry with their men, angry at what they have been subjected to by them, and their anger bursts out in torrents in these monologues.

Kunti

The woman who fought against Fate, the courageous widow who stood alone and faced the might of an empire which wanted to crush her and her children, a woman who commanded the gods themselves to do her bidding…so they speak of me. But am I all these? Am I any of these? How much of this is true, and how much false?

I, Pritha, the daughter of Devameedha Shoorasena of the Vrishnis, the woman known by the name of Kunti because she was adopted by King Kuntibhoja, have a unique position among the women of the Bharatas.

For all the might of the Bharatas, generations had passed since a princess had chosen a Bharata prince happily in a proper swayamvara and come to live in the Hastinapura palace with the tremulous excitement of a new bride. Emperor Shantanu had two wives – no one knows exactly who his first wife really was. They say she was the river goddess Ganga, that she had one day walked up from the river and years later, after the birth of her eighth child, walked back into the river. Strange is the story of the love and life of this woman and the emperor.

And then, in his old age, Grandmother Satyavati had come to live as his empress in Hastinapuira. But it was as the most hated woman in all of Hastinapura that she had stepped into the palace. She was of low birth and her arrival had a precondition – that her would-be firstborn son by the emperor shall inherit the throne of Hastinapura. And Hastinapura, which I have seen only divided into myriad groups of warring interests, rose up for once in unison, bound by a common hatred for her. That it was the emperor who wanted her and not otherwise did not bother the men who hated her. That poor woman of lowly birth had not come to the Bharatas as a happy bride.

Nor had the two princesses of Kashi, mothers of my husband Pandu and his brother. They were seized, along with their sister Amba, from their swayamvara hall, by prince Bheeshma while the whole assembly stood terror-struck before his might. And it was not to be his wives that he had captured them but to be the wives of his half-brother, still a boy, and incapable of winning a wife for himself. No kshatriya princess loves to marry a man who cannot win a wife for himself – that the two princesses later came to adore the young prince they married is another matter.

How Gandhari came to Hastinapura is well-known. Had she not come, it would have been death and destruction to her father and her people. The adored daughter of an indulgent father, a young woman who loved to spend all her time in music and dance that were unique to her people, does not marry a blind man happily – and Dhritarashtra had even been denied the right to the throne.

It was as though the Bharatas had a perverse fascination for the idea of getting unwilling mothers for their future princes. For, when Madri was brought here later, it was not again according to her wishes.

So I was the first princess in a long time to happily choose a Bharata prince for her man and come to Hastinapura with joy in her heart, dreams in her eyes, and her prince’s hand in her hand.

But the joy was short lived. I soon discovered that Uncle Bheeshma was not too happy to have me for a bride for his younger nephew. For, not long after I arrived in Hastinapura I had a sapatni. Uncle Bheeshma had got another wife for Pandu the reason for which, to this day, eludes me. Sometimes I believe it is just that Prince Bheeshma believed it was for him to choose a bride for his nephew and ward and the prince had no right to acquire one for himself by himself. For certainly it was not a common custom among the Bharatas to wed more than one wife – in the previous twenty-odd generations there had been only two or three kings who had married more than once princess. Besides, the family of the Bharatas had just recovered with the greatest difficulty and with recourse to an antiquated custom from the disastrous results of a young prince marrying more than one princess at a time – prince Vichitraveerya had to pay the price of that error with his life and that had threatened to end the Bharata dynasty. There was no reason for Uncle Bheeshma to be eager to get a second bride for Pandu.

So that was it – uncle Bheeshma did not like the idea of Pandu getting a wife for himself; he believed it was for him to get a bride for young Pandu. He wanted me, the self-chosen wife of Pandu, to be denigrated to where he thought I belonged – a woman of secondary importance to Pandu and to the Palace.

But just as I was lucky in Pandu, I was lucky in Madri. Instead of becoming a competitor for Pandu’s love, a rival, she became a younger sister to me. She was my opposite in most respects. I was worldly-wise, matured, perhaps a bit too matured for my age, with hardly any sentimentality about me. I had the spirit of a much older woman in me: the violent events into the middle of which I was born – Mathura was in great turmoil in those days – and the tragic happening that shook my life even before I was fully out of girlhood – perhaps because of these. Whereas Madri had an ephemeral, ethereal quality about her. She was not concerned with anything in the world, no violent passions stormed about in her heart, calculations and machinations for position and possessions were entirely foreign to her nature. The only time I ever saw her in a state of passionate assertion about anything was in the last moments of her life – after she had decided to enter the funeral pyre of Pandu. No one could dissuade her from that.

How have the Bharatas treated me, come to them to be their king’s queen and the mother of their future king?

When I came to Hastinapura it was as the queen of the reigning king Pandu but when I came back from Shatashringa after the death of my king, I had suddenly become an ordinary woman whom no one wanted to see.

Questions were raised as to the parentage of the five children I had brought with me. By the men who had usurped my husband’s throne in his absence I was told that there was no Bharata blood in my children or in Madri’s children and as such they could not be treated as Bharata princes. Of course it was no surprise that they did so – prince Dhritarashtra’s greed for power was notoriously well-known and he had powerful coterie of people who supported him as it often happens when an unrightfull man claims to be the rightful heir to a throne. When I said that in that case neither my deceased husband nor Prince Dhritarashtra had any Bharata blood in them, I was abused in the meanest possible language – I, their queen, the queen of their dead king, was abused like a woman of the street. And all I was demanding was my children’s right to their father’s throne and all I said about Pandu and Dhritarashtra was the bare truth – they were sons born to the princesses of Kashi and their father was the sage Vyasa who was certainly not a Bharata. Where was Bharata blood in the veins of Pandu and Prince Dhritarashtra then? Surprisingly, even the man who was reputedly justice embodied turned against my children. He who had vowed to stand by the throne of Hastinapura until his last breath deserted its rightful heirs and stood watching as it passed into unlawful hands. Uncle Bheeshma protected Prince Dhritarashtra and his children.

Silence is abetment where speech is called for. Inaction is abetment where action is called for.

As to my children, they were not even given the most fundamental right of ordinary citizens: the right to exist, the right to live. My Bheema was poisoned and the hands that did this murderous deed went scot-free. Later our home was set fire to and a hundred other felonies befell us and the offenders were never castigated.

A woman of iron will, they call me. I tell you, you would be that, too, if you had five darling children to look after, children born to be rulers of men and states and yet condemned by fate to beg for alms to fill their stomach, children whose very life was in danger every moment as their existence was a threat to those who were clinging desperately to a usurped throne against popular wish and will.

A woman who took her fate in her hands, they call me. I wish I hadn’t, I wish no one would, if by that all you get is what I got – endless years of grief and agony as fate in a fury tossed my children from one wicked situation to another, forcing me and them to hide from all civilization for our physical survival and to wander through forests infested with deadly animals and inhabited by deadlier brutes and savages, looking for subsistence in fruits and roots and the animals of the wild.

A woman who commands the gods themselves with the power of her mantras, they call me. And yet those mantras did not come to my aid when I wanted to save my king from his curse. The poor, poor man longed for a touch, a mere touch of mine, all those grief-filled years in Shatashringa and I, his wedded wife, could not appease that simplest of desires of an accursed man. Pritha, the woman who commanded the gods, had to stand a forced witness to the cruel agony of her husband when he longed for what was every man’s by birth by the very laws of nature, longed for what is not denied even to base animals, and had to see him finally perishing a victim to his longing. The power of my mantras did not fetch the gods to my aid when my children were denied their right to the throne, when they were banished to Varanavata, when their house was set fire to, when they, after their escape, were forced to wander like fugitives from law amid lurking dangers. Nor did it come to her aid when she wanted to protect her firstborn from battle with his own brothers and faced death through it. That is Pritha’s power over the gods for you.

Oh, yes, it came to her aid on other occasions. When she was but an ignorant girl and wanted to try out the power of a mantra given her by a rishi, it came to her in the form of a pregnancy to make her an unwed mother of a child whose father she couldn’t produce before the world. She was forced to do that most accursed act of her life – float down a river her firstborn, so that King Kuntibhoja, who had adopted her as a child, who loved her more dearly than he loved his own soul, would not have to hang his head in shame.

It did not come to her aid when her firstborn son, who was to the world Karna, the son of Radha – he was an equal to the noblest of princes in birth and superior to every one of them in nobility and velour – was treated like a common cur, for his crime of wanting to match his skill in weapons with his brothers and cousins. Lowborn, they called him. Son of a driver, fit only to drive their vehicles, they ridiculed. They – statesmen and teachers who had grown old with age, who should have recognized worth wherever they found it.
It did not come to her aid when that son of hers was forced to bend in the only direction from where support came, to Duryodhana and to evil, and finally met his sad end fighting on the side of evil.

But it came to her aid when her husband asked her to offer herself to other men so that she may bear him progeny which would open the gates of heaven for him. Remove all the euphemisms, and this is what Pritha’s power over the gods gave her: children out of wedlock.

True, I sound bitter. Hasn’t there been anything in Pritha’s life to be happy about? Yes, there has been, without doubt. The love of a man who knew how to love with his heart, even if he could not with his body. And six children – my four and Madri’s two – the like of whom the world will have to wait for a long time to see again. The love of someone who entered my life as my rival and became my greatest companion, my great solace, my sister – Madri. And the love of a nephew whom the world worships as the very lord of the universe.

But suffering leaves its mark on the soul, I suppose, in spite of everything. And endless suffering certainly does – suffering that seemed to have no end as it lasted through decades and decades. And to think that it was all because of the greed of one man for power and the inaction of another who refused to stand in the way of that greed, though he was duty bound to. That hurts.

O0O

Five Angry Women: 3

Five Angry Women is an attempt to look at certain events in the Mahabharata from the standpoint of some of its central female characters, all brides of the Bharatas – Gandhari, Satyavati, Ambika, Kunti and Draupadi. These women are all angry – angry with their men, angry at what they have been subjected to by them, and their anger bursts out in torrents in these monologues.

Ambika

Our family has given many princesses to the Bharatas. King Bharata, that illustrious son of Shakuntala and Dushyanta the story of whose love has become one of the greatest romances of this land, the one that gave this dynasty its present name and who in ancient days conquered all of Aryavarta and gave it the name Bharata, himself had married a Kashi princess, the beautiful Sunanda.

But history does not record how the princesses who came to the antahpura of the Bharatas were treated. Their stories are lost among the glorious acts of the kings who fought in many lands and won all the wars. Amidst all that victory and glory who will bother about a few queens in the inner apartments of the palace?

But one thing strikes. The Bharatas seem to be overly fond of bringing women into their palaces against their wishes. I am told that Queen Satyavati was not very happy to come here as the empress of Shantanu, our father in-law. I mean mine and my sister Ambalika’s.

Gandhari and Madri, two of our daughters in-law, certainly did not come here according to their wishes. A distraught Gandhari gave in when she found the alternative was death and destruction to her father and all that belonged to him. When Madri’s brother Shalya refused to oblige Bheeshma, he was offered profuse wealth in exchange; and of course, coercion through the not very subtly veiled threat of Prince Bheeshma was there to force Shalya’s hands.

We were brought to Hastinapura by Prince Bheeshma – the same Bheeshma who had brought Mother Satyavati as a wife for his father, the same Bheeshma who would get Gandhari for Dhritarashtra, the same Bheeshma who would bring Madri for Pandu. He can take credit for bringing women for three generations of the Bharatas – for his father, for his half-brother, and for his nephews. So what, if he did not get a wife for himself?

I loved the prince I married very much, I loved him to distraction, and perhaps I loved him to his death – and so did my sister. Young Vichitraveerya – he was younger than both me and Ambalika; he married very young because his elder brother Prince Chitrangada had died before attaining the age of marriage and Vichitra himself was sick – perhaps Prince Bheeshma suspected that something might happen to him before he provided an heir to the throne of the Bharatas. Eventually that is what happened, anyway.

Young Vichitra knew what love and care was for the first time in his life after we came to the palace. A woman recognizes easily a man hungry for love and we found effortlessly such a one in him. The poor prince had grown up an unwanted child, a neglected child. His father was deep in grief and guilt over his second marriage, which took away the right to the throne from Prince Bheeshma, his very life-breath. His mother, incessantly humiliated by the nobility in the court, for ever neglected by the emperor, effusively respected by Prince Bheeshma – given the empty, formal respect due to a woman who was his mother only because she had married his father – had grown silent and withdrawn. She spent all her time in her chamber, which she had rendered dark by means of curtains. She hadn’t wanted to be a queen or an empress, nor had she wanted to be a queen mother. An emperor’s longing for her had brought her to the palace and once in the palace she had ceased to get even his formal love. Love had dried up in her heart, as a river dries up reaching a desert. The noblemen and ladies who crowded the palace shunned the prince of mixed blood. And, anyway, it was his elder brother who was going to succeed the emperor to the throne.

Now, his young heart thirsty for love filled for the first time, Vichitra learned not only to take love but also to give it. I have known very few people who could love the way he did; there was such depth in his love, such intensity, such transparent passion, and such total generosity. Probably he was so filled with gratefulness at someone coming to love him – and two beautiful, desirable, young princesses at that – that his entire being melted and overflowed. But his emaciated being that had existed on a scanty diet all these years could not withstand this torrential, deluge-like onslaught of passionate love. As for us, we were too young to understand the need to restrain. In his very overflowing of passion, our prince lost his life.

We had seven years of Vichitra’s love, seven years during which he left us not for a moment, day or night, not even for the affairs of the state. And yet neither Ambalika nor I conceived once. The palace whispered that it was because we sisters were both barren – but Vichitra assured us: our love was enough for him. More than enough. He felt fulfilled by that.

Uncle Bheeshma arranged dasis for him – the palace was full of slave girls. Several of them were of kshatriya birth. But Vichitra refused to touch them. No, he couldn’t be unfaithful to his Ambika and Ambalika, he said.

Then we heard other whispers – they said there was some curse on the Bharatas. Which is why neither of us was conceiving. They said the vow of celibacy that Uncle Bheeshma had taken was that curse finding its fulfillment. Just as our inability to conceive was. The line of the Bharatas would come to an end with Uncle Bheeshma and Vichitraveerya.

And then suddenly one day Vichitra died, and when that happened, life came to an end for us. Ambalika and I became breathing carcasses. Nothing mattered to us after that. To think that we had lost so completely in a young boy whom we had married so reluctantly, married because we had no alternative but to, snatched away and brought to Hastinapura as we were by the terrible prince Bheeshma from our Swayamvara hall.
Can dead bodied be hurt again – not easily, but yes, because we were to know an experience worse than the very death of Prince Vichitraveerya: an ancient custom the monstrosity of which grows in size the more you ponder over it.

Mother Satyavati was unwilling to accept defeat. She did not want it said that because of her the great line of the Bharatas came to an end.

Mother Satyavati came to my chamber one day. She was agitated beyond words and I knew whatever she had to tell me was extremely unpleasant both to her and to me. She told me we owed it to the people of the Bharata lands, to the throne of Hastinapura, to ancestors of the Bharatas, to posterity, and to Prince Vichitra himself that I produced an offspring. But how? Through the custom of niyoga. A brother produces offspring in the wife of his dead brother.

My entire being revolted against the very idea and yet I submitted – not for the lands of the Bharatas, not for the sake of the throne of Hastinapura, not for the sake of the Bharata ancestors, not for the sake of posterity – for I cared a hoot for these – but for the sake of my dead prince. I did not want it said that the Bharata line came to an end with Prince Vichitraveerya.

And yet I was shocked beyond belief when I saw the sage entering my room. Who did I expect? Prince Devavrata Bheeshma, who never broke his vows even if the very heavens threatened all of earth with hellfire? But if he had taken the vow to remain a celibate all his life he had also taken a vow to stand by the throne of Hastinapura till his last breath. The two vows were in conflict now. And Mother Satyavati had asked me to expect my brother in-law in my chamber that night.

Yes, perhaps him.

Or maybe, one of the other Bharata princes – Prince Bahleeka, Emperor Shantanu’s brother had sons not too old and they lived in the royal palaces.

What was it that shocked me so when I saw sage Vyasa entering my chamber that night? The fact that it was he who had entered my chamber? Or was it his appearance? I would perhaps never know. I was in no state to analyze my thoughts and feelings then nor am I in a state to objectively look at them now. Perhaps both, I suppose.

Anyway, if it is any consolation, I was later to learn that the sage was not so horrible and revolting in his normal state and was a very lovable person in his own way, though by no means a handsome man. His appearance at that time was because he was engaged in some form of terrible austerity.

As those wiry, dark arms smeared with ashes and I know not what else took me in them, I closed my eyes in unspeakable horror.

I was doing my duty to my prince and I had tried to do it as cheerfully as was possible, but I am born a princess, grew up among the finest things in the world, and my dreams were centered on a handsome prince all the years I had dreamed of being a mother. The sage and the idea of what he was doing with me, to me, were beyond my limits of endurance. In any case, it was not I who closed my eyes – they closed themselves. It was not a voluntary, thought-out decision, but something that happened to me.
My son Dhritarashtra was born blind.

A blind prince has no rights of succession. Dhritarashtra could not succeed to the throne of the Bharatas. They needed another prince.

Now it was Ambalika’s turn to submit herself. Again, she too turned pale at the sight of the sage and this despite knowing who she was to expect. But I have only pity or her.
Her child, to whom the name Pandu, the pale one, stuck, was born sickly pale.

No woman should have submitted even once to what I had had to go through. That is the most degrading thing in life I can think of. It is animals you to take to each other for breeding, not human beings. For men and women, it should be a coming together and merger of the spirit, mind and body – in that order. A fusion brought about by love. With men and women creation of new life should not be an animal function. If performed as an animal act, subjection to it once will destroy in one stroke all that is noble in a woman.
Yet I was asked to undergo that process a second time, so that the Bharatas could have a healthy prince without defects as the heir to their throne.

It was my maid that I sent to the sage this time. Even a mere human body such as I had by then been reduced to, not a human being but a human body, revolts from certain acts.

I was not altogether disappointed when I was seized by force by Prince Devavrata from my swayamvara hall. For, to be a Bharata queen is the greatest dream of all Aryan Princesses. The outside world had no idea what women who became Bharata brides had to endure. I was shocked to learn that we were not to be his wives, but of his half-brother. And yet that half-brother loved me beyond words and made me feel fulfilled. But life had ceased to have any meaning to me the day my prince died. And I ceased to live after I had given the Bharatas a prince, whom they named Dhritarashtra. Yet I acted once more – to perform that one act, the first act of revolt in my whole life: sending my maid in my place to the sage.

Perhaps I was a weakling; both of us, Ambalika and I, were weaklings. For I know one woman who had the courage to go through that experience more than once, and at the behest of her own husband.

I am talking of Pritha, Pandu’s wife.

O0O

Five Angry Women: 2

Five Angry Women is an attempt to look at certain events in the Mahabharata from the standpoint of some of its central female characters, all brides of the Bharatas – Gandhari, Satyavati, Ambika, Kunti and Draupadi. These women are all angry – angry with their men, angry at what they have been subjected to by them, and their anger bursts out in torrents in these monologues.

Satyavati

A lotus is beautiful, you consider it divine, you call it the miracle of nature, you see the glory of the Creator in it—such beauty and it has bloomed in mire, in dirt! But no woman wears the lotus on her head—that honor goes to the flowers that bloom in the well-tended gardens. A lotus is wonderful, but just wonderful enough to offer at the feet of kings, of the gods, of great men, but not wonderful enough to wear on one’s head. Fit for the feet, not for the head.

The footwear on your feet are soft, are beautiful, are convenient. They protect your feet from heat, from the pebbles on the path, from the thorns in the jungles, from dirt. But they are made of leather, the skin of animals and they forever remain accursed by their birth. You can wear them everywhere but before a place of worship you have to remove them; they are inauspicious, tainted. Why, you do not take them even inside your homes. Their limit is your doorsteps.

My father knew this as well as anyone else, if not more. For he was himself a king of sorts, a chieftain, but of the lowborn. Dasharaja was the chief of the fisher folk. He knew that just as he would not be allowed to sit in the assembly of other chiefs of noble birth, his daughter shall never be welcome as their bride.

And yet a king, an emperor, fell in love with me – perhaps through the power of the blessing of the rishi whom I bore a child – and when that happened my father insisted that I shall be given him only on condition that the eldest son born to me by the emperor shall be his heir. The emperor was taken aback, naturally. And he wouldn’t submit himself to this atrocity, for he loved his son, already a fine young man, prince Devavrata, more than anything else in the world. So the emperor went bake to Hastinapura without me.

My father insisted on this condition because his knowledge of the ways of palaces told him that only as the mother of the future king would I be able to gain some respect in Hastinapura. Without that I would have been reduced, he feared, to the level of a palace sweeper once the emperor’s fancy for me came to an end or he himself left this world. Emperors must after all die as everyone else and Emperor Shantanu was already quite old.

But the emperor’s desire for me was so great that he lost all interest in life and the affairs of the state. From palace whisperings the young son learned what ailed his father and came for me. He vowed with the gods as his witnesses that he shall never claim the right to the throne and shall remain a celibate all his life.

I was welcomed into the palace of Hastinapura as the most hated woman. Even the king’s longing for me turned into loathing the moment he learned that it was the terrible vows of his son that had fetched me for him. It was as though a drum of water had suddenly been emptied over the fire in his heart.

I never wanted to be a queen or an empress—I would have been quite happy as the wedded wife of one of the fishermen along the bank of Yamuna. I would have risen with the risen sun to see him off to his day’s work with his nets and stood waiting for his return, praying to Mother Yamuna for his safety. I would have been perfectly contented to bear his children to accompany him in his work as they grew up and later to support him when he was too old to go fishing. Or I would have been happy living alone in the hope that one day my son, the son of the rishi, would come back after finishing his studies under his father and then I would see men falling at his feet in reverence. Even I would go and touch his feet for he would be a rishi himself—I had imagined it all again and again in my idle hours sitting on rock-protected strips of marble on the banks of Mother Yamuna. How happy I would be as he stopped me from bending and instead himself fell at my feet, his mother’s feet! A rishi touching my feet, a rishi who is the very flesh of my flesh, the life of my life!

I was quite content.

The emperor never forgave me my father’s sin—for what was caution to my father was sin to him. Years passed without the emperor, now my wedded husband, ever entering my chamber. What was so tempting before was sheer venom now, a venom so powerful that his very contact with it would blow off all that he held dear in life.

And then it was after the Rajaguru and his nobles reminded him of his duty to the empire, the duty to give it an heir, that he finally yielded and came to me.

It was a man coming to a woman to fulfill his duty! Two bodies joined momentarily to use, yes, to use, one of their abilities. A male and a female body meeting to bring new life into this world.

I am an empress and crude words do not befit my speech but if I could put it bluntly this is what I would say: we mated that night. Yes, mated, like animals.

Human bodies are capable of bringing new life into this world but the act of producing new life has to be one of infinite love and tenderness, a result of life’s longing for life. If it is not, the result shall be disastrous. Life produced because it is your duty to produce it cannot be noble life, cannot be healthy, would not lead to fulfillment.

Nor were the two products of my womb – one was too impetuous and it cost my little child his life itself before he came to know what life was, what youth was. And the other, a mental wreck, too died not long after paying the price of his parent’s sins with his own life. He was created holding all passions back, in a disinterested, mechanical act. And his heart was like a desert land that thirsted for the rains of love. Came the two princesses of Kashi, Ambika and Ambalika, my Vichitraveerya jumped into the bottomless ocean of passionate love and sensuality. The whirlpools caught him and ere long he had also left this world. The Emperor had died years ago.

The Bharatas’ dream of a glorious, everlasting dynasty flickered in the storms of these tragic events; the empire seemed to flounder before their very eyes. Accusing fingers of every subject of Hastinapura rose and pointed at me – they demanded an heir to the throne. But for me, the noble Devavrata would have become their king and they would have been happy under him. I, the low-born fisher maid, had mixed my blood with the noble Bharata blood and produced weaklings who could not even survive long enough to produce further offspring to themselves.

I approached Devavrata. Even my father begged him. But he was not willing to swerve from his vows which had by now become absurd. Bheeshma was proud of his vows and he would not break his vows even to save one of the two vows he had taken. He wasn’t going to be helpful in producing an offspring who would sit on the throne of Hastinapura, nor would he sit there himself. He cared not if his refusal meant the end of the Bharata dynasty.

Then I remembered my son, by now a great rishi before whose feet crowned heads bowed, a man less of this world than of another. My Krishna, whom his father called Dwaipayana because he was conceived on an island, was now the great sage Vyasa to the people.

He came and I asked him the meanest thing I could ask of a rishi: the services of his body for a few moments it would take to sow seeds in the field of Vichitraveerya. I wanted him to go to Ambika. After all, Vichitra was his half-brother and Ambika was Vichitra’s widow. He knew of the custom of Niyoga. I reminded him of his duty to his mother and explained to him his mother’s helplessness. He yielded.

He asked for time to finish his austerities first but it was time that I did not have. He yielded again.

Accepted custom or no custom, sacred practice or no practice, to ask a young woman to offer herself to a man other than her husband – not in marriage, not to live with him as he wife and beloved, but for a few moments for a physical act, to offer her body to another man so that he may deposit his seeds in it to germinate and grow – that is the most loathsome act I have had to do in my whole life. And I did it. I was duty-bound – again duty-bound – to do it. The Rajaguru, the nobles, the common men and women in the streets and fields across the vast lands of the Bharatas, all demanded it of me, and I did it.

Asking Ambika humiliated me more intensely than asking my son Krishna. Maybe, because the physical act remains with the woman for nine long months but with a man it is a fact of a few moments. As for mental tortures, who among the living can escape guilt and self-loathing for the acts we commit in life.

Later I had to repeat it all with Ambalika. And once more I was forced to do it – that was the third time.

I offered the Bharatas Dhritarashtra and Pandu, and fate brought Vidura into this world as the son of a maid. But all three were begotten by my son and hence belonged to the Bharatas.

I had done my duty.

O0O

Five Angry Women: 1

Five Angry Women is an attempt to look at certain events in the Mahabharata from the standpoint of some of its central female characters, all brides of the Bharatas – Gandhari, Satyavati, Ambika, Kunti and Draupadi. These women are all angry – angry with their men, angry at what they have been subjected to by them, and their anger bursts out in torrents in these monologues.

Gandhari

I was but a field for the Bharatas. To Prince Dhritarashtra, to be precise. And that is how they referred to me often: Dhartarashtra-kshetra, the field of Dhritarashtra. Kshetra means a field, a spot of ground, a bit of soil, a patch of land, where you sow seeds and let time run its course for you to reap the crop.

I was never given any more right than a field has in the matter of its produce. How I had to stand and watch as a helpless bystander as my pretty children all grew up to be evil, masters in the wicked ways of the world, encouraged by a father whose greed for power was the very essence of his being!

Poor man! That is, if a field has the right to feel so about its owner, its cultivator, who tills it and farms it. Prince Dhritarashtra was brought into this world to be a king and the moment he was born it was proved he should never become one because he was blind. He grew up with the one cruel reality never fading from before his sightless eyes: that he shall never have power in his hands though he was born to wield all the power of the Bharatas. No wonder he became the embodiment of greed for power.

I came to Hastinapura precisely as that – a fertile field for the seeds of Dhritarashtra. The previous generation of the Bharatas had been very unlucky in the matter of offspring. The eldest, Prince Devavrata Bheeshma would not marry because of a vow he had taken; the second, Prince Chitrangada died before he was old enough to marry; and the youngest, Prince Vichitraveerya, died without issues though he was wedded to two princesses. The next generation was brought to the world by that strange abominable custom of niyoga whereby a brother of her deceased husband produces offspring in the woman. Well, not so abominable perhaps, if you consider women as mere fields – should it matter to the fields what seeds are sown in them, whose seeds are sown in them? Their only function is to germinate the seed, and nurture it so long as it needs its nourishment.

The assiduity of the Bharatas is renowned. They were particular that this time they needed a field that would give them plenty of yield and fast enough. And they came for me – it was widely whispered round that I had received a boon that I shall become the mother of a hundred sons. The most fertile piece of land! The Bharatas wanted it.
Men consider their wives as mere fields but strangely when it comes to their own daughters they are touchy! The daughters are not mere fields for someone! Would they realize that their wives are also someone’s daughters!

Matrimonial relations between the Gandharas and the Bharatas were nothing new. Even Emperor Hastin, the founder of Hastinapura, had desired connections with us and got a Gandhari princess for his son Ajameedha. Yet my father would not have given me over to the Bharatas on any account, except that if he had not done so it would have meant certain death to himself and all the male members of our family and to countless number of our men in a brutal war. Fangs of blood and violence would have ripped open all of Gandhara and all there would have been razed to the ground. Our land, and all in it, would have been destroyed mercilessly, as pitilessly as a wild elephant in a lotus pond destroys all its flowers. The name of the warrior who headed the Bharata family meant dread—both literally and figuratively. Bheeshma meant dread.

Yet father was reluctant. For one thing, the prince for whom I was being sought had no Bharata blood in him though they claimed he was a Bharata. His mother was the Kashi princess Ambika and father, the sage Vyasa. For another, he was born blind. And, besides, it was whispered that he was a slave to uncontrollable passions, his personality having got twisted by the violent winds of opposing forces amidst which he grew up thirsting for power and respect but winning only protection and pity.

When I stepped into the portals of Hastinapura, I made a shock. I was blindfolded, and had to be lead by a maid to make obeisance to my elders. I could feel the awesome stillness that engulfed the palace, after the sound of the quick hot breaths the lungs sucked into dozens of bosoms stricken by an agonizing confusion.

With that single act I had done what my father wanted to do with his weapons but could not. I had struck a blow to the mighty Bharatas from which they were never going to get up. They wanted a field, a fertile field, for the seeds of Dhritarashtra and they were going to have that fertile field. But nothing more. Love cannot be commanded by a threat of weapons and Gandhari was not going to be ordered to be a loving guide to the blind prince of the Bharatas.

Women do not necessarily grow to love the man they marry against their wishes. Often it is only to tolerate them, to submit to them that they learn. They learn to resign to their fate.

My act of blindfolding myself was not an act of self-denial in the sense of denying the pleasures of the world that come to us through our eyes because they were denied to my husband. It was not a noble act at all. It was an act of vengeance. Gandhari too was a kshatriyaa, a warrior-woman. If prince Bheeshma was mighty, so was she. He had his weapons and she had hers.

How I wished I could see the faces of those shocked men and women assembled in the reception hall of Hastinapura on that day as I stepped into it, alighting from my chariot helped by my maids and Brother Shakuni! But no, I can’t both give the shock and enjoy seeing it.

Vengeance is wicked, you might say. Yet, it is. I have suffered more than enough through my long life for it. And yet I say, no one has the right to force another human being to do what he does not want to do. And certainly no woman should be forced to wed a man not of her liking. A woman should be able to go to him with the most holy of attitudes, with love filling her heart to the brim. For she is to receive a part of him into her and hold it there, nurture and nourish it into a human being. For, through that act she is becoming a part of the timeless act of creation, she is becoming the creator of new life.
But if that man is hateful to her, there can be nothing more detestable, nothing more nauseating than having to submit to that act of receiving his seeds and ten having to hold his seeds in her. No doubt this is something only a woman can understand, only a woman who had had to submit to that unmentionably horrendous act…for instance, a woman who has been raped by a monster.

With love the act, the process of creation, is wonderful, but without love it is the most horrid thing in the world. The tragedy of it is that the child born is not only his but also hers. As much hers as his – in fact, much more hers than his. And every time she loves him because he is hers, she will be forced to love what is his. The most unenviable position of women! Having to take care of, with no alternative but to take care of, what belongs to a man she hates with all her heart.

I was given no option in the matter, I had no choice. I was forced to offer myself as a field to a man for whom I had no tender feelings in my heart; forced through a threat to my father’s life and to all else that he held dear in the world.

How conceited a man can grow in his own glory – Prince Bheeshma thought I would be happy once Dhritarashtra was forced on me.

A woman has a right for vengeance. Every woman has a right to her revenge if she is forced to become a field, an object, an abject thing and nothing more.

Where women are forced to submit their bodies against their will to men’s purposes, where women are significant only as female human bodies and not as human beings, evil shall flourish. The Bharatas had forced themselves on me. They had forced themselves on the princesses of Kashi, Ambika and Ambalika, and they had forced themselves on the princess of Madri, Pandu’s wife.

Perhaps I should have stopped my children from going the evil way. But I had no power to do so. They gave me none.

Princes are not brought up by their mothers. Men decide what they shall become, not the mother. The king decides what they shall become, not the queen. The queen is given no say in that matter. And that is right in a way, isn’t it? It is right that the field shall have no say in how the produce from her is to be used.

And yet I came to love Dhritarashtra – nature’s anaesthesia, perhaps. Or maybe that is what it means to be a woman – to love even those who trample her. But that is another story.

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What is Meditation: Osho

Here is something tremendously beautiful I read recently. The great master Osho explains what meditation is in The Psychology of the Esoteric:
Meditation is not an Indian method; it is not simply a technique. You cannot learn it. It is a growth: a growth of your total living, out of your total living. Meditation is not something that can be added to you as you are. It cannot be added to you; it can only come to you through a basic transformation, a mutation. It is a flowering, a growth. Growth is always from the total; it is not an addition. Just like love, it cannot be added to you. It grows out of your totality. You must grow towards meditation.


The Great Silence

Silence usually is understood to be something negative, something empty, an absence of sound, of noises. This misunderstanding is prevalent because very few people have ever experienced silence. All that they have experienced in the name of silence is noiselessness. But silence is a totally different phenomenon. It is utterly positive. It is existential, it is not empty. It is overflowing with a music that you have never heard before, with a fragrance that is unfamiliar to you, with a light that can only be seen by the inner eyes.

It is not something fictitious; it is a reality, and a reality which is already present in everyone - just we never look in.

Your inner world has its own taste, has its own fragrance, has its own light. And it is utterly silent. immensely silent, eternally silent. There has never been any noise, and there will never be any noise. No word can reach there, but you can reach.

Your very center of being is the center of a cyclone. Whatever happens around it does not affect it. It is eternal silence: days come and go, years come and go, ages come and pass. Lives come and go, but the eternal silence of your being remains exactly the same - the same soundless music, the same fragrance of godliness, the same transcendence from all that is mortal, from all that is momentary.

It is not your silence.

You are it.

It is not something in your possession: you are possessed by it, and that's the greatness of it. Even you are not there. Because even your presence will be a disturbance.

The silence is so profound that there is nobody, not even you. And this silence brings truth, and love, and thousands of other blessings to you.

Growing In Sensitivity

Meditation will bring you sensitivity, a great sense of belonging to the world. It is our world - the stars are ours, and we are not foreigners here. We belong intrinsically to existence. We are part of it, we are the heart of it.

You become so sensitive that even the smallest blade of grass takes on an immense importance for you. Your sensitivity makes it clear to you that this small blade of grass is as important to existence as the biggest star: without this blade of grass, existence would be less than it is. This small blade of grass is unique, it is irreplaceable, it has its own individuality.

And this sensitivity will create new friendships for you - friendships with trees, with birds, with animals, with mountains, with rivers, with oceans, with stars. Life becomes richer as love grows, as friendliness grows.

Love, the Fragrance of Meditation

If you meditate, sooner or later you will come upon love. If you meditate deeply, sooner or later you will start feeling a tremendous love arising in you that you have never known before - a new quality to your being, a new door opening. You have become a new flame and now you want to share.

If you love deeply, by and by you will become aware that your love is becoming more and more meditative. A subtle quality of silence is entering in you. Thoughts are disappearing, gaps appearing...silences! You are touching your own depth.

Love makes you meditative if it is on the right lines.

Meditation makes you loving if it is on the right lines.

You want a love which is born out of meditation, not born out of the mind. That is the love I continually talk about.

Millions of couples around the world are living as if love is there. They are living in a world of 'as if.' Of course, how can they be joyous? They are drained of all energy. They are trying to get something out of a false love; it cannot deliver the goods. Hence the frustration, hence the continuous boredom, hence the continuous nagging, fighting between the lovers. They are both trying to do something which is impossible: they are trying to make their love affair something of the eternal, which it cannot be. It has arisen out of the mind and mind cannot give you any glimpse of the eternal.

First go into meditation. Because love will come out of meditation - it is the fragrance of meditation. Meditation is the flower, the one-thousand-petal lotus. Let it open. Let it help you to move in the dimension of the vertical, no-mind, no-time, and then suddenly you will see the fragrance is there. Then it is eternal, then it is unconditional. Then it is not even directed to anybody in particular, it cannot be directed to anybody in particular. It is not a relationship, it is more a quality that surrounds you. It has nothing to do with the other. You are loving, you are love: then it is eternal. It is your fragrance. It has been around a Buddha, around a Zarathustra, around a Jesus. It is a totally different kind of love, it is qualitatively different.

Compassion

Buddha has defined compassion as "love plus meditation." When your love is not just a desire for the other, when your love is not only a need, when your love is a sharing, when your love is not that of a beggar but that of an emperor, when your love is not asking for something in return but is ready only to give - to give for the sheer joy of giving - then add meditation to it and the pure fragrance is released, the imprisoned splendor is released. That is compassion; compassion is the highest phenomenon. Sex is animal, love is human, compassion is divine. Sex is physical, love is psychological, compassion is spiritual.

Abiding Joy for no Reason at all

For no reason at all you suddenly feel yourself joyous. In ordinary life, if there is some reason, you are joyful. You have met a beautiful woman and you are joyous, or you have got the money that you always wanted and you are joyous, or you have purchased the house with a beautiful garden and you are joyous, but these joys cannot last long. They are momentary, they cannot remain continuous and uninterrupted.

If your joy is caused by something it will disappear, it will be momentary. It will soon leave you in deep sadness: all joys leave you in deep sadness. But there is a different kind of joy that is a confirmatory sign: you are suddenly joyous for no reason at all. You cannot pinpoint why. If somebody asks, "Why are you so joyous?" you cannot answer.

I cannot answer why I am joyous. There is no reason. It's simply so. Now this joy cannot be disturbed. Now whatsoever happens, it will continue. It is there, day in, day out. You may be young, you may be old, you may be alive, you may be dying – it is always there. When you have found some joy that remains – circumstances change but it abides – then you are certainly coming closer to Buddhahood.

Intelligence: the Ability to Respond

Intelligence simply means ability to respond, because life is a flux. You have to be aware and to see what is demanded of you, what is the challenge of the situation. The intelligent person behaves according to the situation and the stupid behaves according to the readymade answers. Whether they come from Buddha, Christ or Krishna, it does not matter. He always carries scriptures around himself, he is afraid to depend on himself. The intelligent person depends on his own insight; he trusts his own being. He loves and respects himself. The unintelligent person respects others.

Intelligence can be rediscovered. The only method to rediscover it is meditation.

Meditation only does one thing: it destroys all the barriers that the society has created to prevent you from being intelligent. It simply removes the blocks. Its function is negative: it removes the rocks that are preventing your waters from flowing, your springs from becoming alive.

Everybody is carrying the great potential, but society has put great rocks to prevent it. It has created China Walls around you; it has imprisoned you.
To come out of all prisons is intelligence – and never to get into another again.
Intelligence can be discovered through meditation because all those prisons exist in your mind; they cannot reach your being, fortunately. They cannot pollute your being, they can only pollute your mind - they can only cover your mind.

And when you are out of the mind, watching it, being aware of it, just being a witness, you are intelligent. Your intelligence is discovered. You have undone what the society has done to you. You have destroyed the mischief; you have destroyed the conspiracy of the priests and the politicians. You have come out of it, you are a free man. In fact you are for the first time a real man, an authentic man. Now the whole sky is yours.

Intelligence brings freedom, intelligence brings spontaneity.

Aloneness: Your Self-Nature

Aloneness is a flower, a lotus blooming in your heart. Aloneness is positive, aloneness is health. It is the joy of being yourself. It is the joy of having your own space.

Meditation means: bliss in being alone. One is really alive when one has become capable of it, when there is no dependence anymore on anybody, on any situation, on any condition. And because it is one's own, it can remain morning, evening, day, night, in youth or in old age, in health, in illness. In life, in death too, it can remain because it is not something that is happening to you from the outside. It is something welling up in you. It is your very nature, it is self-nature.

An inside journey is a journey towards absolute aloneness; you cannot take anybody there with you. You cannot share your center with anybody, not even with your beloved. It is not in the nature of things; nothing can be done about it. The moment you go in, all connections with the outside world are broken; all bridges are broken. In fact, the whole world disappears.

That's why the mystics have called the world illusory, maya, not that it does not exist, but for the meditator, one who goes in, it is almost as if the world does not exist. The silence is so profound; no noise penetrates it. The aloneness is so deep that one needs guts. But out of that aloneness explodes bliss. Out of that aloneness – the experience of God. There is no other way; there has never been any and there is never going to be.

Celebrate aloneness, celebrate your pure space, and a great song will arise in your heart. And it will be a song of awareness, it will be a song of meditation. It will be a song of a lone bird calling in the distance - not calling to somebody in particular, but just calling because the heart is full and wants to call, because the cloud is full and wants to rain, because the flower is full and the petals open and the fragrance is released...unaddressed.

Let your aloneness become a dance.

Your Real Self

Meditation is nothing but a device to make you aware of your real self – which is not created by you, which need not be created by you, which you already are. You are born with it. You are it! It needs to be discovered. If this is not possible, or if the society does not allow it to happen - and no society allows it to happen, because the real self is dangerous: dangerous for the established church, dangerous for the state, dangerous for the crowd, dangerous for the tradition, because once a man knows his real self, he becomes an individual.

He belongs no more to the mob psychology; he will not be superstitious, and he cannot be exploited. And he cannot be led like cattle, he cannot be ordered and commanded. He will live according to his light; he will live from his own inwardness. His life will have tremendous beauty, integrity. But that is the fear of the society.

Integrated persons become individuals, and the society wants you to be non-individuals. Instead of individuality, the society teaches you to be a personality. The word 'personality' has to be understood. It comes from the root, persona – persona means a mask. The society gives you a false idea of who you are: it gives you just a toy, and you go on clinging to the toy your whole life.

As I see it, almost everybody is in the wrong place. The person who would have been a tremendously happy doctor is a painter and the person who would have been a tremendously happy painter is a doctor. Nobody seems to be in his right place; that's why this whole society is in such a mess. The person is directed by others: he is not directed by his own intuition.

Meditation helps you to grow your own intuitive faculty. It becomes very clear what is going to fulfill you, what is going to help you flower. And whatsoever it is, it is going to be different for each individual - that is the meaning of the word 'individual': everybody is unique. And to seek and search for your uniqueness is a great thrill, a great adventure.

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The Sins of Krishna: Killing of Bhishma

I have for long intended to take a close look at the several sins Krishna is accused of both by Indian culture and by westerners. When I recently read Elaine Fisher’s paper The Devious God: Mythological Roots of Krishna’s Trickery in the Mahabharata, which heavily depends on material from such scholars as Bimal Krishna Matilal, Alf Hiltebeitel and Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, my desire became stronger. It was then that I received a call from a friend of mine, a professor, an author and a scholar of great repute himself, who calls me up once every couple of months from the other side of the world to discuss long distance different aspects of Indian culture. My friend loves Krishna. This time his question was about the ‘apparently immoral acts of Krishna,’ as he put it. How do we explain them, he asked. I have dealt with this question in part in my article Krishna: A Study in Transformational Leadership, available online, based on a class lecture I gave at XLRI School of Business a few years ago. However, I felt it is a good time to take that closer look.

One of the sins Krishna is accused of is the way he achieves Bhishmavadha – getting Bhishma ‘killed’ at the hands of Arjuna. And that is what I shall look into in this study.

Following the ancient tradition beginning with the Mahabharata itself, I shall continue to use the word kill here, though Arjuna does not actually kill Bhishma, since he, because of a boon, could not be killed by anyone, but could choose his time of death. The Adi Parva tells us:

Shantanu, seeing the impossibly hard thing done by Bhishma, being pleased with him, gave him the power of death at will.

Bhishmavadha happens, as everyone familiar with the Mahabharata knows, on the tenth day of the epic battle. Krishna is accused of deviousness and duplicity here. He is accused of making the Pandavas go to Bhishma on the night of the ninth day and seek from him the secret of how he could be killed. Then, as suggested by Bhishma, during the next day’s battle he has Arjuna hide behind Shikhandi and kill him while Bhishma gives up battle seeing Shikhandi in front of him.

Now let’s take a look at the events as the Mahabharata describes them. I am following here the story as the popular Sanskrit text [Gita Press] narrates it and not as the Critical Edition does, though the quotations are mostly from the Critical text. The popular text is more detailed.

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Towards the end of the ninth day of the battle, Bhishma is in one of his fiercest moods. Throughout the day he had been in a fiery mood – the previous night Duryodhana had gone to his tent at night, riding a horse, leading a large procession, accompanied by musicians with several of his friends on elephants – making sure it is a very public affair. There he had practically asked Bhishma to resign as commander-in-chief since he was achieving nothing for him. On the ninth day Bhishma was fighting under this humiliation. The Pandava army was fleeing everywhere in dread. Such was the chaos unleashed in the battlefield by Bhishma’s slaughter that in the pandemonium that resulted fathers blindly killed sons, sons killed fathers and friends killed friends. Pandava soldiers were fleeing in every direction – they had removed their armours and helmets, so that they will not be attacked, and as they fled helter-skelter, their hair blew wildly in the wind.

Krishna has the greatest respect for Bhishma – perhaps he respects him more than he respects anyone else in the Mahabharata, with the exception of Vyasa. But he now realizes killing Bhishma is a desperate need and it cannot be delayed any further. He asks Arjuna to fulfill the vow he had taken in the middle of kings at Virata – that he shall kill Bhishma in battle.

In spite of all the slaughter that Bhishma is doing and all the havoc he is causing, Arjuna is still not ready to kill the grandsire. He is in the same dilemma as he was at the beginning of the Gita: “Tell me Krishna” he says, “what is better for me? Obtaining the kingdom by killing those who should not be killed, which will be worse than hell, or the sorrows of life in the jungle?”

He then reluctantly asks Krishna to take the chariot to where Bhishma is and says he shall now fell [pātayishyāmi] Bhishma. Krishna does that, but soon realizes that Arjuna is not fighting as he should – while the grandsire is ferocity itself, like the fire that engulfs everything at the end of the world [yugāntam iva], Arjuna is still fighting mildly [mrduyuddha].

Krishna watches it for a long time, while mighty warriors and ordinary soldiers alike fall dead all around him, cut down mercilessly by Bhishma. Finally, he is unable to stand Arjuna’s softness to Bhishma any more. He knows the damage Arjuna’s attitude is doing, the devastation it is causing to his own army. Enraged, in a moment of exasperation, he drops the reins and jumps down from the chariot possessed by a blinding fury. With no weapons in hand, holding just his charioteer’s whip, he races towards Bhishma like an angry storm. His eyes are red. The earth shakes at every step he takes. People who watch the scene shiver in terror and cry out spontaneously – “Bhishma is finished, Bhishma is dead”.

Arjuna himself jumps down from the chariot now and runs after Krishna. He clings to him from behind and reminds him of his vow not to fight in the war. Such is Krishna’s rage that Arjuna’s hold from behind has no effect on him and he drags Arjuna along, as he continues his race towards Bhishma. Then Arjuna tries to hold him back by clinging to his feet. He now declares to Krishna that he shall kill Bhishma. By then Krishna has taken ten more steps dragging Arjuna along with him. When Arjuna makes that promise, Krishna, still fuming and silent, but pleased with what Arjuna has said, walks back towards the chariot.

Soon however the sun sets in the west and the battle is stopped for the day.

That night the Pandavas sit in consultation among themselves, along with Krishna and perhaps other leaders on their side.

During the discussion Yudhishthira confesses to Krishna that he does not like the idea of battling against Bhishma [na yuddham rocate mahyam bhīshmena saha mādhava], but at the same time Bhishma is killing his soldiers in battle [hanti bhīshmo mahāvīro mama sainyam ca samyuge]. He also admits that when Bhishma is in his form, it is impossible to have victory over him [na tu bhīshmah susamkruddhah śakyo jetum mahāhave]. He sees only one solution – go to the jungle and live there, which according to him is a much better option [vanam yāsyāmi durdharsha śreyo vai tatra me matam.]. They are, he says, like moths flying towards their death and Bhishma is a blazing fire. Forget about the kingdom, their very survival seems to be in question. And, says Yudhishthira, his one desire at the moment is to remain alive [jeevitam bahu manye’ham jeevitam hyadya durlabham]. Yudhishthira speaks in this tone for long [bahuvistaram].

Krishna is moved by compassion [kāruNyāt] by the dharma-obsessed king’s grief and consoles him. He praises his, Yudhishthira’s, brothers, describing them surpassingly mighty and capable of winning the war by themselves. But if Arjuna does not want to kill Bhishma, then, he says, if he has Yudhishthira’s permission, he, Krishna himself, would enter the battle. Please give him permission, and he would challenge Bhishma, battle with him and kill him. There is nothing he would not do for Arjuna – he would pull out his flesh itself and give it away if that would help Arjuna. And so would Arjuna give up his life for his, Krishna’s, sake. Because of his friendship with Arjuna, it becomes his duty to fulfill Arjuna’s oath. Arjuna is not only his friend, but also his disciple and his relation.

There is no deviousness here, no duplicity, no betrayal. Krishna does not recommend any guileful means to eliminate Bhishma from the battle. His plan befits the highest ideals of warriorhood. He would challenge Bhishma in open battle and kill him there right before the eyes of Duryodhana and his men. In fact, because of his commitment to Arjuna and the Pandavas he would even break his own word and enter the battle if that would help. The ill-fame that he would accrue through that does not bother him.

Ill-fame never bothered Krishna at any time in his life once he knew what the right thing for him to do was. In this he is a complete contrast to Rama, for whom the opinion of the world was of utmost importance and for the sake of which, he would even abandon his wife whom he loved beyond words, who he knew loved him equally, and of whose purity he did not have the least doubt. Krishna does not take his decisions by asking himself what everybody will think. He might ask Arjuna that question, but never felt it applied to him. His commitment was to higher ideals than public opinion. Ninda, scandal and disrepute, has always followed Krishna like a shadow – Krishna never bothered about it, nor did it ever stop him from doing what he thought was right.

Krishna also defines through his words here what friendship means. His friendship with Arjuna is the highest kind of friendship – nothing higher is possible. So is his loyalty to Arjuna.

Well, Yudhishthira refuses to consider Krishna’s offer, which is the right thing for him to do. Showing the maturity befitting a man of his position and an elder cousin of Krishna, he says no to Krishna. He reminds him of his vow not to enter the battle.

And then, as an alternative, he – Yudhishthira – places another idea before them all.

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It is central to our discussion to understand that this suggestion comes from Yudhishthira. And unprompted by anyone, all on his own. There hasn’t been even the shadow of such a suggestion from anyone present there – neither from Krishna, nor from the other Pandavas or the other people who were presumably there, like Dhrishtadyumna, Satyaki, Drupada, Virata and so on. This idea is Yudhishthira’s very own.

Let me translate here from the Critical Edition the entire short passage in which Yudhishthira makes this proposal.

“Bhishma has made an agreement with me, O Madhava, that he will give me advice but will never fight on my behalf – fighting he will do for Duryodhana. Such is the truth, O Lord. So he will give me advice and [through that] the kingdom, O Madhava. Therefore, let’s again ask Bhishma about how he can be killed – you and all of us together. So, if you like it, O Krishna, let us all go to Bhishma, the best of men, immediately and ask for his counsel. He shall give us advice that will be true and good for us, O Janardana. I shall proceed in this battle, Krishna, exactly as he will tell us. Firmly committed to his word, he will certainly give us both counsel and victory.

“As children without a father, it is he who brought us up. It is that beloved grandsire, the father of our father, that we want to kill in his old age! Shame on the way of life of the kshatriyas!”

What Yudhishthira is doing here is recalling Bhishma’s promise to him on the opening day of the war. On that day, as the two armies stood facing each other, Yudhishthira had removed his armour, crown and weapons, and unarmed, his hair open and lose, had walked towards the Kaurava army, his palms joined together in reverence. Everyone, including his brothers, was initially confused. Krishna explained the situation to them and then they all followed Yudhishthira. Reaching Bhishma, Yudhishthira touched his feet in respect and sought his permission to fight against him. Bhishma wished him victory in war and, pleased with his conduct, asked him to ask for a boon. Since Bhishma had made it clear that he was bound to fight for Duryodhana and would do so, Yudhishthira had asked him to give him his counsel. Bhishma had asked him what counsel he needed and Yudhishthira had told him:

“Since that is the unfortunate case, O Grandsire, I bow to you and ask, please tell me how you could be killed by others in battle”.

In response, Bhishma had told him:

“Time hasn’t come for me to die. Come to me later.”

Yudhishtira now knows that time has come. He uses the word ‘again’ here in suggesting they go to Bhishma now – bhūyah. What he means is let’s do that again now, as I had done on that occasion.

Yudhishthira shows his nobility again here by recalling how Bhishma had looked after them lovingly, orphans that they were, while they were children. He regrets that it is that grandsire he has to kill and curses the dharma of the kshatriyas [dhig astu kshatrajīvikām].

[Throughout the Mahabharata, Bhishma is referred to as the grandfather of the Pandavas and the Kauravas, though he is actually their granduncle. By Indian custom of the day, and even of today in many parts of the country, an uncle is referred to as father, and a granduncle, as grandfather. To make the distinctions clear, sometimes the terms younger father or elder father and younger grandfather or elder grandfather are used. The feelings of reverence towards an uncle and a granduncle too were/are those towards a father and a grandfather.]

Krishna approves of Yudhishthira’s plan. Together, they go to Bhishma that night itself, after removing their armours and weapons. And there, after bowing before him reverentially, Yudhishthira asks the grandsire how they could win the war and obtain the kingdom. He also asks him to tell them how he could be killed:

“Please, tell us yourself how you could be killed.”

Bhishma tells them that he will not fight Shikhandi on any account. The standard on Shikhandi’s flag is inauspicious, he is a transsexual, having once been a woman and then transformed into a male. He has vowed not to fight against anyone whose symbol is inauspicious or who is or once was a woman. He will not fight Shikhandi because of both these reasons.

He then suggests that they put Shikhandi in front, or someone else of Shikhandi’s nature, and then fight him. Then from behind him, Arjuna should fell him. If they do that, their victory is assured.

The Pandavas and Krishna bow to Grandsire Bhishma and come back.

However, no one really likes the idea Bhishma has suggested. Arjuna positively hates it. Once again he tells Krishna he cannot kill Bhishma. He remembers playing in the lap of the grandfather as a child. Once, as a child, he had called Bhishma father and Bhishma had corrected him lovingly, telling him he was not his father, but his father’s father. How can he kill that man? He declares:

“Let him slaughter my army as he wishes. Le us win the war or let me be killed. But I shall not fight with that noble man. Tell me Krishna, what do you think?”

When Arjuna asks Krishna to tell him what he thinks of it, Krishna takes recourse to the supernatural and tells him that thus has Bhishma’s death been decided by the gods a long time ago. And then he quotes Brihaspati. Quoting the great acharya of Nitishastra, the Science of Polity, Krishna says:

“Even if he is someone senior to you or an aged person, or someone endowed with virtues, if he comes to you to kill you and thus becomes an ātatāyi, you must kill him. This, O Arjuna, is the eternal dharma of the kshatriyas.”

An atatayi is a great sinner. The meaning of the term includes anyone who is making an attempt on your life, even though he may not be a sinner otherwise.

Arjuna eventually says:

“Shikhandi shall certainly become Bhishma’s death. Every single time Bhishma lays his eyes on him, he retreats. So we shall keep Shikhandi in front of him and fell Bhishma through the means he has suggested. I shall stop the other great warriors with my arrows and let the mighty warrior Shikhandi focus all his attention on fighting Bhishma.”

It is interesting to note here that even now Arjuna does not once say he shall kill Bhishma. That is an unacceptable duty that he would perform, but he would not admit it, or name it, even to himself. It is ‘we’ who shall kill Bhishma – not ‘I’. Not Arjuna.

O0O

We see here then that Krishna has no role whatsoever in planning to have Bhishma killed through Arjuna who would fight standing behind Shikhandi. He was there when the suggestion was made by Bhishma, true. But the idea of going to Bhishma was not his, nor was the idea that Arjuna should attack Bhishma from behind Shikhandi.

Is Krishna being devious and deceptive in telling Arjuna that he has to kill Bhishma? What is going on is a battle and Arjuna is the best warrior on the Pandava side and Bhishma, the commander-in-chief and arguably the fiercest warrior on the enemy side. True, both of them love each other dearly. Both of them respect each other as warriors and as men of the highest integrity. Human feelings are the most natural things under such circumstances, and they should be there. If such feelings were not there, these men would not only not have been great men, but would have fallen below the level of ordinary humanity. But what is going on is a war and that war makes it necessary that Krishna gives strength and courage to Arjuna and helps him see things in the right perspective. As Krishna himself says, he is Arjuna’s friend and relation, and Arjuna is his disciple. Arjuna counts on Krishna’s wisdom to guide him – he has chosen Krishna against Krishna’s army for this reason and not because he was a good charioteer. Arjuna has just asked him: katham vā krshna manyase – “Krishna, what do you think?”

By telling Arjuna it is his duty now to kill Bhishma, Krishna does no more than what he is supposed to do under the circumstances. Honestly and in a straight forward way. With no deviousness.

Let’s now see if Krishna uses any other devious means in the execution of the plan. Does he use any duplicity in the battlefield itself to have Bhishma killed on the tenth day, other than what was suggested by Bhishma himself?

O0O

Skipping other details of this crucial day, the tenth day of the war, let us go straight to where the incidents that concern us take place. As the sun begins going down on the west, we find Bhishma tired of the carnage and devastation he has been spreading all around him for ten days. Deep despondency sets in and he now feels he has no interest in living any more. He just wants to die, and die fast. He does not any more want to continue the slaughter he has been doing for the last ten days.

He addresses Yudhishthira who happens to be near him at that time and tells him:

“Yudhishthira, wise man that you are and a master of all scriptures, listen to my words, son, that are in accordance with dharma and will give you heaven. I have totally lost all interest in this body, O Bharata. I have spent too much time killing men in battles. For that reason, if you want to do what will please me, please endeavor to get me killed by putting Arjuna as well as the Panchalas and Srinjayas in front.”

Yudhishthira announces to his soldiers and chief warriors that they need not fear Bhishma any more. They are going to have their victory over Bhishma now, because Arjuna is going to attack him, keeping Shikhandi in front of him. The warriors attack Bhishma, but they are opposed by Duhshasana. By then Arjuna joins the battle, attacking Bhishma, with Shikhandi as his cover. Other warriors join in on both sides. Shikhandi attacks Bhishma and wounds him, but Bhishma does not attack him in return. On one occasion, Bhishma is about to attack Arjuna with a mantra-empowered weapon [divyāstra] but at that time Shikhandi comes before him and seeing him, Bhishma withdraws the weapon.

Soon the Pandavas, with Shikhandi before them, attack Bhishma as a team, surrounding him from all sides. His armour is in ruins and he is getting wounded at vital points, but that does not upset Bhishma. At one point he is battling with and wounding simultaneously six maharathis on the Pandava side – Satyaki, Bhima, Arjuna, Virata, Drupada, and Dhrishtadyumna. Arjuna chops down Bhishma’s bow with an arrow of his. The Kaurava maharathis get enraged at this. Seven of them together attack Arjuna – Drona, Kritavarma, Jayadratha, Bhurishrava, Salva, Shalya and Bhagadatta. Seeing them attacking Arjuna several Pandava heroes come running there – Satyaki, Bhima, Dhrishtadyumna, Virata, Drupada, Ghatotkacha and Abhimanyu. A hair-raising battle now ensues among these giants, which the Mahabharata compares to the battle between the Devas and the Asuras of old.

After Arjuna has chopped down Bhishma’s bow, as the old warrior stands bowless, Shikhandi wounds him and his charioteer. He then destroys Bhishma’s flagpole. Bhishma in the meantime picks up another bow, which too Arjuna cuts off. Every time Bhishma picks up a new bow, Arjuna cuts it off.

An angry Bhishma now picks up a powerful shakti, and Arjuna breaks that too with his arrows into five pieces. Bhishma knows he can strike back, but he remembers that it is his dear Pandu’s son who is attacking him, and also that Shikhandi is standing in front of him. He remembers the boon that he has received – his power to choose his own death. And he concludes that time has come for him to choose that death.

“Long ago when Father married Kali [Satyavati], pleased with me he gave me the boon of death at will as well as immortality in battle. And now I think the time has come for me to choose that death.”

He continues putting up a fight, but his fight now does not have the power it had all along. Arjuna realizes the decisive time has come. He attacks Bhishma with a steady flow of arrows. Shikhandi too continues attacking him.

Bhishma gives up battling and turning to Duhshasana who is either in Bhishma’s own chariot or in a nearby one, tells him with a smile on his face: “These arrows are striking me like lightning. No, these arrows cannot be Shikhandi’s – neme bānāh śikhandinah.”

“I am being wonded terribly by the arrows of Arjuna. The arrows that Arjuna shoots incessantly at me hit me with the force of lightning. No, these arrows are not Shikhandi’s – neme bānāh śikhandinah.”

“These arrows penetrate my armour and pierce my very vitals. They hit me with the force of pounding rods. No, these arrows are not Shikhandi’s – neme bānāh śikhandinah.”

“They are as unbearable as Indra’s vajra and the staff of the lord of death. Unstoppable like the thunderbolt, they torment my very life. No, these arrows are not Shikhandi’s – neme bānāh śikhandinah.”

“As damaging as the messengers of Death, they destroy my pranas. O, how they hit me like maces and bludgeons! No, these arrows are not Shikhandi’s – neme bānāh śikhandinah.”

“Like enraged snakes filled with poison and projecting their tongues out, these arrows pierce my very vitals. No, these arrows are not Shikhandi’s – neme bānāh śikhandinah.”

“These arrows puncture my body even as baby crabs break open their mother’s body. These arrows are Arjuna’s. No, these arrows are not Shikhandi’s – neme bānāh śikhandinah.”

Again and again, as each time the arrows strike him with the force of pounding rods and the rod of the lord of death, with the force of maces and bludgeons, Bhishma, in unendurable pain, keeps saying – neme bānāh śikhandinah. No, these arrows are not Shikhandi’s.

Soon there is not one inch in Bhishma’s body that is not covered by arrows.

As the sun approaches the western horizon, the end comes. The mighty grandsire of the Bharatas falls down from his chariot, his head facing the eastern direction, the arrows piercing his body not allowing his old body to touch the ground. They form his final bed of rest – he will lie there in that condition long after all the slaughter of the battlefield is over and the war had ended in the victory of the Pandavas. He will await utttarayana, the northern solstice, to come and then when that period, considered auspicious to die, begins, he will finally end his life on earth.

O0O

This then, in brief, is how the Mahabharata describes the incidents after the Pandavas plan Bhishma’s death based on the idea given by Bhishma himself. As can be seen, Krishna’s role in the subsequent events leading to the grandsire’s death is no more than that of Arjuna’s charioteer. In the final battle scenes that culminate in Bhishma’s death, we know Krishna is there because he has to be driving Arjuna’s chariot, but otherwise he is not active at all.

Neither in planning the death of Bhishma nor in its execution does Krishna play any devious or dubious role.

Krishna commits no sin in the Bhishmavadha episode.

O0O

Note: All translations from the Mahabharata are mine. When the Sanskrit text is taken from the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute’s Critical Edition, the verse numbers are given before the verses. When it is taken from the Gita Press edition, verse numbers come after the verses. I have made certain compromises with the transcription of Sanskrit text since the blog does not recognise some characters commonly used for Sanskrit transcription.

References
01094094a tad drshTvā dushkaram karma krtam bhīshmena śantanuh
01094094c svacchandamaraNam tasmai dadau tushTah pitā svayam

06055037a jaghānātra pitā putram putraś ca pitaram tathā
06055037c priyam sakhāyam cākrande sakhā daivabalātkrtah
06055038a vimucya kavacān anye pānduputrasya sainikāh
06055038c prakīrya keśān dhāvantah pratyadrśyanta bhārata

avadhyānām vadham krtvā rājyam vā narakottaram
duhkhāni vanavāse vā kim nu me sukrtam bhavet. 06.106.038

06103029a hanishyāmi rane bhīshmam āhūya purusharshabham
06103029c paśyatām dhārtarāshTrānām yadi necchati phalgunah
06103030a yadi bhīshme hate rājañ jayam paśyasi pāndava
06103030c hantāsmy ekarathenādya kuruvrddham pitāmaham

hanta prcchāmi tasmāt tvām pitāmaha namo’stu te
vadhopāyam bravīhi tvam ātmanah samare paraih 06.043.047

06041043c na tāvan mrtyukālo me punar āgamanam kuru

06103059a bhavān hi no vadhopāyam bravītu svayam ātmanah
.
06103081a esha tasmāt purodhāya kam cid anyam mamāgratah
06103081c mām pātayatu bībhatsur evam te vijayo bhavet

06103089a kāmam vadhyatu me sainyam nāham yotsye mahātmanā
06103089c jayo vāstu vadho vā me katham vā krshna manyase

Krishna: A Leader Takes His Own Decisions

King Drupada had been living for years in the hope that one day he would be able to have his revenge. Drona had insulted him. He had sent his Kuru disciples to capture him and they had succeeded in their effort. Arjuna had tied him up and taking him to Hastinapura, handed him over to Drona in the form of his gurudakshina. Drona had then taken from him part of his kingdom and returned the rest, saying now they were equals and could be friends again, as they were in their gurukula. Ever since, he had had only one desire, one purpose, for continuing to live – revenge for the humiliation Drona had inflicted on him.

His daughter Draupadi had grown up seeing her father’s agony every day of her life. This unsurpassed beauty of the age, whose intoxicating fragrance spread a whole yojana all around, had vowed that she would wed only that man who would give her father what he desired – the vengeance his entire being thirsted for. That would be her kanyashulka, her bride price from the man who wanted to marry her.

One day the great teacher of the Vedas and martial arts, Guru Sandipani, who was in the habit of travelling from capital to capital much of the year round along with his gurukula, reached Kampilya, Drupada’s capital, as he had done many times in the past years. He had always made sure that he spent at least two weeks a year in Kampilya, out of respect for Drupada.

While the guru and the king were seated engaged in friendly conversation, Drupada shared his greatest concern with the teacher who was in touch with most of the royal families across the land: he wanted to give Draupadi in marriage to a young prince who is unsurpassed as a warrior. Sandipani knew every royal family in the land – who would be the right young man for Draupadi?

“Of course,” said Sandipani, “of all the young princes in the land today, the best warrior is Arjuna. But…”

Sandipani did not have to add that Arjuna would not do. He was the favourite disciple of Drona and he revered his guru as few disciples revered their guru. There was no question of Arjuna giving him the bride price he wanted – vengeance against Drona. Besides, it was Arjuna who had in the first place vanquished him and taken him to Drona, to subject him to his humiliation.

Seeing Drupada’s face grow cloudy, Sandipani said, “I can think of only one other name – only one person who is somewhat equal to Arjuna – Karna. But he is the son of a suta and as such is not fit to wed Draupadi. Besides, he too is a disciple of Drona and a very close friend of the Kuru prince Duryodhana. No, Karna is not a solution to your problem.”

Drupada then said with a soft smile on his face, “I have heard of some of your own disciples who are great masters of the science of archery.”

Sandipani took the name of Vinda and Anuvinda, the twin princes of Ujjaini, who were his disciples and great warriors. But Drupada shook his head, indicating he did not have them in his mind. Then the king said, “You have one disciple whose bow has the blessings of the gods. He is famous for his unerring aim with his bow and arrows while seated in a racing chariot, himself managing its four fiery horses. What he does is something even Arjuna cannot do.”

Sandipani burst out laughing and said with great pride in his voice, “Of course you mean my disciple Krishna Vasudeva! He is the only one of my disciples who has surpassed even his guru! He is equal to the greatest warrior in Aryavarta. But don’t count on him – that’s a waste.”

Drupada was surprised and spoke of his bafflement. He had heard great things of this Krishna. He had heard of how he had vanquished Jarasandha, the mightiest emperor of the age. He had heard of how he had killed Paundraka Vasudeva of Karavirapura and the barbarian king Kalayavana from across the borders of Aryavarta. He had heard of how he had taken the Yadavas of Mathura across the deserts to Dwaraka, where they were in great prosperity now. He had heard of how he had defeated other powerful kings and how he has been accepted as the best among the maharathis of the land.

At every word Drupada spoke in praise of his dear disciple, the guru’s face beamed more and more with pride, until it was all aglow with his indescribable joy.

“I have also heard,” said Drupada, “that it is not only in archery that he is unsurpassed, but in the use of the chakra, too. That he can let fly the chakra with unerring aim from a chariot moving at the speed of the wind and the chakra accomplishes its purpose and comes back to him.”

“That’s true,” was all a beaming Sandipani could say. The very thought of Krishna and his valour and prowess made the guru choke with pride.

“What else do I need!” said Drupada. “My request is, please bring him here so that he can wed Krishnaa [Draupadi]. I am sure he will not say no to you – you are his guru.”

Sandipani told him, “Krishna never marries a woman until and unless she wins his heart. Besides, I do not think Krishna would agree to marry Draupadi. For, if he does, he will have to fight his cousins the Pandava brothers, whom he loves dearly.”

“But I am sure he will listen to you, Acharya. You are his guru.”

And Sandipani said, “I do not know any person in the whole wide world who can take Krishna’s decisions for him.”

The guru was not complaining. For, as he spoke these words, his face was more aglow with indescribable pride than at any other time.

O0O

That is what Krishna was. That is how his own guru saw him. Such was his self-mastery, that even the beauty of a woman like Draupadi would not tempt him. Kings and emperors would be willing to risk their lives for her sake, risk the lives of millions of their soldiers for her sake, such was her beauty and glory as a woman, but not Krishna. Krishna definitely admired beauty, admired the power and sexuality of a woman like Draupadi that can ignite passion in a million male hearts, but what will not tempt him to commit a single act of adharma.

And no one took his decisions for this young, emerging leader. Not his father, not his mother, not his guru, not his king, nor anyone else. Only one person took his decisions for him – he himself. And no, this was not a matter of Krishna’s arrogance. Krishna’s decisions had to come from Krishna’s own unique perceptions, and no one other than himself had those perceptions. It had to arise from his own unique and boundless wisdom, and no one else had that wisdom.

Throughout his life, every decision he took originated in his own heart. No other individual and no other power took those decisions for him – neither the charms of a woman, however beautiful she was, nor the temptations of power and position, nor of wealth. Of course, there was something that guided him in his decision making – his vision: his vision of establishing a world in which dharma reigns supreme, a world in which adharma will have no place.

All great leaders take their own decisions. No one else takes their decisions for them.

O0O

Before they parted, Drupada extracted a promise from Guru Sandipani that he would talk to Krishna about his proposal when he met him next.

One afternoon while he was in Dwaraka, Sandipani asked Krishna to come to him. The guru was seated under a banyan tree. After some conversation, Sandipani gave him Drupada’s message: the mighty king of the Panchalas wanted to give his daughter Krishnaa in marriage to Krishna. And Sandipani praised Draupadi: praised her surpassing beauty, her superb intelligence, and her virtuous character. He also conveyed to Krishna the other offers Drupada had made – if Krishna married his daughter, part of the Panchala kingdom would be given to Krishna, and Drupada would help the Yadavas rebuild Mathura, which had been devastated by Jarasandha.

Krishna’s enchanting smile slowly dawned on his face, spreading its irresistible charm. “What a tempting order you have given me, Gurudev,” said Krishna. “I did not know that I was a groom in such great demand. At the time of Rukmini’s swayamvara, no king wanted to sit with me in the assembly, since I am but a cowherd!”

This made Sandipani burst out in laughter. “Well,” he said, “Drupada wants not only to give his daughter to you, but wants something in return.” Sandipani then told Krishna the story of the revenge for which Drupada has been living, and the vow his daughter had taken that she would marry only that noble prince who would give her father the revenge he wanted.

This time it was Krishna’s time to laugh aloud in spontaneous mirth. And he summed up the situation in his own words, “I must marry a woman of strong determination and then, for the sake of her father, fight Acharya Drona and if necessary all his disciples – meaning the Kuru princes. And I’ll have to cease to be a simple Yadava and become one of Drupada’s vassals. I will have to motivate the Yadavas to leave this beautiful land and rebuild a wasteland. A very tempting proposal indeed!”

Sandipani laughed again as Krishna spoke. “Precisely what I told Drupada! And I had also told him no one takes his decisions for Krishna – he does that himself. I wish all the kings of Aryavarta had the clarity of perception that you have!”

When Sandipani asked him what message he should take to Drupada, Krishna told him to inform the king that he was honoured by the king’s offer but did not consider himself fit for that honour and he could not accept it.

It is then Sandipani pointed out the danger involved in Krishna’s answer. Drupada was a king obsessed with vengeance. Supposing Krishna’s no turned Drupada blind – he had lived for years for only one thing, vengeance, and had hoped that he would be able to achieve it through an alliance with the most eligible warrior prince in Aryavarta. It was this hope that had been keeping him on the path of dharma all these years. Supposing he received Krishna’s message of rejection and found no other young prince fit for his purposes? What was there to stop him from offering his daughter to someone like Jarasandha – a king whose ambitions were monstrous and who would be delighted with an alliance with the powerful Panchalas? What then?

Krishna was taken aback. This was an angle he hadn’t thought about. He understood the danger his guru was talking about – that would mean the defeat of all he had lived for, that would mean the end of his dream, that would mean adharma routing dharma and becoming victorious all over Aryavarta.

With the agility that was characteristic of his mind, he saw his course of action in an instant. The calamity his guru was talking about had to be avoided at all costs. And yet he was not willing to be a pawn in the hands of Drupada for achieving his personal vengeance.

The Krishna who now spoke was not the smiling and playful Krishna of a moment ago. This young man was seriousness itself. He gave a new message to his guru, “Gurudev, please tell King Drupada that I will soon visit Hastinapura on an invitation from my cousin Yudhishthira and at that time I shall come and see the king at Kampilya.”

O0O

The cool early afternoon breeze was blowing, bringing with it the freshness of the sea. The guru and his disciple were still under the banyan tree. The conversation continued.

“You plan to go to Hastinapura?” asked the guru in surprise. “There is no point in your going there now. Don’t you know that Yudhishthira is no more the crown prince?”

The news came as a shock to Krishna. He hadn’t heard of that. There was complete silence for a while, with both the guru and his young disciple remaining quiet.

“Shwetaketu was at Hastinapura when these incidents happened. He will explain to you everything.”

Shwetaketu is a senior disciple of Sandipani. The acharya called him to them and Shwetaketu explained to Krishna how Yudhishthira’s popularity as a ruler disturbed Dhritarashtra and his sons and how, after a lot of plotting among themselves, one day Dhritarashtra called Yudhishthira to him and told him to leave the position of the crown prince. He also told Yudhishthira, said Shwetaketu, to take his brothers and Kunti with him and go and live in Varanavata.

“There is no point in your going to Hastinapura now,” said Sandipani, taking over from where Shwetaketu had left telling Krishna of the events at Hastinapura. “I’ll send Shwetaketu to Kampilya with your message. Then you follow him to Kampilya as soon as you can. Now that Duryodhana is in power at Hastinapura, there is no point in your going there.”

Krishna raised his head up at these words of his guru. There was no simplicity on his face now, no smile. When Krishna spoke, it was in a voice that was at once soft and yet had the depth of the oceans. He had taken his decision once again. A decision that came from his unique wisdom and his unique perceptions. A decision that was different from his guru’s.

“Gurudev,” he said, “my dharma is clear to me now. I know what I should do. And I am going to Hastinapura.”

“But Duryodhana will not welcome you.”

“I am not going there for his welcome. So long as Yudhishthira and his brothers were in Hastinapura, dharma was on the rise there; and now that Duryodhana is in power, it is adharma that is on the rise. It is absolutely essential that I must go to Hastinapura now.”

Krishna then explained that he would leave for Hastinapura within two days. Satyaki would go with him along with sixty rathis [chariot warriors] and other needed people. They would take the shorter route through the deserts.

“But why so suddenly? What is the great hurry?” Sandipani asked.

“I sense great danger for the Pandavas,” said Krishna. “There is darkness over them. And I want to reach Hastinapura before that happens.”

Krishna’s eyes had now become steady like those of a god and an irresistible power emanated from them – power that could only be called divine.

“Please do not send my message to Kampilya, Gurudev. Instead, let Shwetaketu come with me and I’ll send a different message with him to Kampilya.”

“What message are you going to send to Kampilya?” asked Sandipani.

“That I am grateful to King Drupada for his proposal of marriage with his daughter. That I shall go to Kampilya to discuss the matter with him. And then I shall consult King Ugrasena and my father on the matter.”

In the same breath, Krishna ordered Shwetaketu to leave for Kampilya straight away with his message.

Krishna was now power itself.

Sandipani sat with wide open eyes. The youth that sat before him was no more his smiling disciple Krishna, but the god of Destiny himself. The transformation was at once scary and awe-inspiring.

“Son,” said Sandipani, “You are the best person to take the correct decision under the circumstances. I do not know what prompted you to take this decision, nor will I ask you. If dharma is showing you the path, follow it. My blessings are with you.”

O0O

This is a glimpse of the kind of leader that Krishna was. Amazingly clear perceptions, unique wisdom, strong intuitions, quickness in decision making, unshakable determination, awe-inspiring power, flexibility and willingness to change his decisions to suit changing circumstances and fresh knowledge. His decisions were always his – and those decisions were always based on the reality of the moment. They were made at the speed of lightning, but they were never impulsive.

The Tibetans say something beautiful about great leaders. Great leaders, they say, are inscrutable – they have the inscrutability of the Garuda.The inscrutability and unpredictability of the Garuda.

It is the Garuda in action we see here.

In Indian mythology, there are close connections between Krishna and Garuda.

O0O

Note: Krishna’s story has been told in a thousand ways by a thousand story tellers and will be told again by thousands more, each in his and her own way. The study here is based on KM Munshi’s Krishnavatara, one of the most brilliant retellings of Krishna’s story ever. Krishnavatara is available from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai.