Govinda (The Aryavarta Chronicles) (8 page)

‘Silly of us to argue, you know,’ Govinda continued lightly. ‘We’re both agreed on the problem. You know and I know that the
perfect empire is an impossible dream. It’s our solutions that differ. You’d
rather not settle for an imperfect resolution, while I think it better to try and make do …’

Yuyudhana made a strained effort to smile. ‘It’s gone from afternoon to evening and all I’ve done today is listen to you prattle
on,’ he complained. ‘I haven’t had even a drop of water, on my inside or outside. First, I need a bath and then some food.
Perhaps some drink too, if we can find the stuff …’

‘Find the stuff? My dear Yuyudhana, you can have all the drink you want, all the wine in Panchala if you like! Don’t you see
the flares being set up all around the palace? A grand wedding is in the offing. Just this morning, Dhrupad announced that
his daughter is to be married in less than a month. All the royals of Aryavarta have been invited to Kampilya to compete for
her hand. A tournament is the plan, I think …’

‘Panchali?’ Yuyudhana gasped.

‘Yes, Panchali!’ Govinda laughed. ‘A relief, isn’t it?’

‘A relief?’

‘But of course! A tournament and a grand wedding. It will be
the
diplomatic event that will determine Aryavarta’s future and Dwaraka’s with it. At the very least, Jarasandha won’t start
an unnecessary war till the new political landscape becomes clear. It gives us time, and it gives us a huge opportunity. The
king is hosting a banquet tonight to mark the announcement. Be a good diplomat and get dressed up to look important, will
you? There are three attendants waiting outside …’

Yuyudhana studied Govinda for a few moments, trying to decipher the inscrutable emotions that showed in the man’s eyes. With
a shake of his head, he gave up. ‘Looks like you need their help more than I do.’ He gestured towards Govinda’s simple cotton
robes.

With a reluctant groan Govinda said, ‘You’re right. I’d better get changed too. I think I’ll borrow one of Shikandin’s silk
tunics …’

Yuyudhana watched his cousin leave and then set about his routine. As a purple darkness spread over the sky, the Great Road
and its travellers disappeared into the horizon. In and around the palace, a dazzling array of lights flickered to life.

In a shadowy room, not too far away from where Yuyudhana stood lost in contemplation, King Dhrupad ambled around in an attempt
to keep anxiety at bay. Braziers set into the many pillars that ran down the length of the hall panelled the floor in light
and shadow, now throwing the monarch’s face into relief, now hiding his thoughts. He came to stand, pensive, in front of a
portrait of his father, the previous ruler of Panchala.

The memory of his father made Dhrupad swell with pride and, at the same time, bristle with rage. Within moments those emotions
changed to shame and disgust, as other thoughts flooded over him. Half their territory and all their honour had been lost
because of that weakling, his wastrel of a son. With a shake of his head, he resumed pacing, flinching as loud laughter erupted
from the banquet hall, where the feast was still in progress. He would have to join them soon. But before that he had to see
to an unavoidable task.

‘You sent for me, Father?’

Dhrupad turned around. Shikandin looked every bit the prince he was. His hair was no longer wild and matted; instead, it fell
sleek and straight down his back, in sharp contrast to the white linen tunic he wore over his pleated lower robes. He had
no sword, as was the etiquette expected at a banquet, and so had swapped his baldric for a belt, which he wore over his tunic.

Dhrupad felt neither happiness nor pride at the sight of his son. A grimace was all he had to spare as he coldly declared,
‘The alliance we’ll make through Panchali’s marriage can secure the future of this kingdom. Dhrstyadymn finally has the chance
to rule a great nation, perhaps even a unified one. I won’t have his destiny compromised by your folly or your treachery.
Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Father.’ Shikandin’s eyes shimmered their usual green-brown; his face remained impassive. It irked Dhrupad no end.

‘I have recalled Yudhamanyu, the boy you claim to have fathered, from his training. Henceforth, he’ll stay here under my watch.
If I sense even a hint of betrayal on your part, even a whisper of your past treason, he’ll suffer the consequences more than
you will. It may be too much to bear for a motherless son …’

Dhrupad looked at the younger man with expectation. Surely, he would show some emotion. But all Shikandin said was, ‘Yes,
Father.’

The brief interaction between father and son would have ended there, but for the small glint of metal that escaped from under
the high neck of Shikandin’s tunic. Dhrupad felt his heart speed up as he realized what it was. Before he could help himself,
the images came flashing, hard and strong – the desperate princess at his doorstep asking for his help, the rage in her eyes
at being turned away, the curse she had spewed before leaving, never to be seen again …

He drew in a deep breath at that thought, even as more memories followed, filling his mouth with a bitter taste. Shikandin,
all of seven years old, saying, ‘But, Father, they are people, too,’ staring wide-eyed as those heathen Firewrights had been
executed in public, and then the day he had found the fine beads and brought them to Dhrupad, saying excitedly, ‘Father, look
what I’ve found …’

Dhrupad felt a fresh surge of anger rush to his head. The wretch of a boy had not done one right thing as a youth and certainly
nothing as a man. His folly had been somewhat bearable when he was a child, for Dhrupad could give vent to his anger with
a few well-chosen strokes with the flat of his sword, but Shikandin was a grown man now. A part of Dhrupad toyed with the
idea of ordering his guards to take his son down to the dungeons and whip him, just to see pain, any emotion really, in those
stone-cold eyes. The temptation passed, pushed out of his mind by the thought of the banquet that was on, of his daughter’s
imminent wedding and its political implications, all weighed by the same ambitious pragmatism that had guided Dhrupad’s every
decision as a prince and as a king. He settled for barking out, ‘And take that damned thing off! How many times have I told
you not to wear it! Now, get out!’

Shikandin bowed, stiff and formal. Then he strode out of the room and did not stop till he was a long way from Dhrupad’s private
audience hall. Pausing for a moment, he tucked the chain of beads into his tunic so that it did not show, but he did not take
it off. He knew better than to waste time on trying to please his father – that
was something he could never manage to achieve no matter what he did. He also knew better than to feel hurt. His father’s
offences against him paled in comparison to what others had suffered at Dhrupad’s orders.

A burst of merry laughter from the direction of the banquet brought Shikandin out of his solemn thoughts. He recognized the
voice as Dhrystydymn’s and smiled.
The sins of the father shall lie heavy on the son … Better me, than my siblings
. Turning around, he headed directly for the quarters that had been assigned to the Yadus. He found Govinda in the middle
of pulling on a borrowed tunic. Govinda paused and gave him a questioning look.

’The usual,’ Shikandin replied. ‘Don’t bother getting all dressed up. We’d better get going while the banquet is still on
and no one notices. One of my spies just sent word …’ he remained cryptic, knowing that there were many hidden ears listening,
even within the royal palace.

Govinda nodded and followed Shikandin out of the room. Soon the two men were riding into the night. Behind them, the celebrations
continued.

PANCHALI HAD REFUSED TO ATTEND THE BANQUET. SHE SAT ALONE
in her room, dazed, and thankful that no one was around to notice. Ever since the news of her wedding had been broken to
her, she had been overcome by a sense of foreboding. She felt angry, desperate and, as she ultimately admitted to herself,
terrified.

Govinda had greeted her father’s announcement that she was to be married with the diplomatically expected degree of enthusiasm,
but nothing more. He had displayed no emotion at all, not even surprise. Worse still, he had taken the news that she would
be married away to whoever won the tournament without a stir. She had been made a prize, an object, a
thing
, and it had not seemed to bother him in the least. That had hit her hard.

All these years Govinda had been privy to her deepest secrets and passions, the anger she felt against the world around them,
her joys and sorrows, hopes and dreams. She was brutally honest with him, always. He, on the other hand, had many secrets,
secrets she often never knew he had. Their differences, their similarities made little sense by themselves, but it all came
together when they were together. They were two halves of a whole – equal yet opposites, similar yet complements. They had
never spoken about their relationship, or put a name to what they shared. It was sometimes perfect, sometimes imperfect, but
far from mundane and normal. Or was it?

Watching him as her father had made the announcement, Panchali had no longer been sure of what to say, or if she ought to
say anything at all. She had cut short her ineffectual protests and meekly assented. Somehow, in that single moment, her usually
fiery will lost some of its effulgence. She had often been accused of trying to emulate her brothers, of assuming an air of
masculinity – something she had vehemently denied. But now she wondered if the emotions had been borrowed, after all.

Panchali cringed as raucous laughter blasted into the night from the banquet hall. With some effort, she willed herself to
be patient, to wait for the festivities to end. At last, when the bustle of activity slowed down and then stopped as everyone
retired for the night, she made her way through the silent corridors of the palace, to Dhrstyadymn’s room. She waved aside
the guards on duty at his door and knocked on it. Knowing her brother well, she kept knocking till she heard sounds of movement
and wakefulness from inside.

The door opened, and one of her mother’s many lovely personal attendants stepped out. The sairandhari looked back and smiled
at Dhrstyadymn before disappearing down the dark corridor.

‘Well, come in then,’ Dhrstyadymn invited his sister in.

Panchali stepped in and seated herself on a cushioned bench next to a window overlooking the balcony. Her brother moved around,
lighting up a few of the brass lamps that hung suspended from the ceiling. That done, he sat down next to her and studied
her for a while.

‘This had better be important, Panchali. I was having a rather good time.’ He tried to feign irritation but his tone gave
him away.

Panchali remained serious. ‘Do you remember anything from, you know, before …?’ she asked him.

Dhrstyadymn regarded her critically. ‘What does it matter?’

‘I need to know,’ she confessed. ‘I need to know if I am even half the person that I long to be. Don’t you wonder?’ Panchali
keenly considered her brother. Their stark resemblance had earned them the label of twins, but she was the younger of the
two by a couple of years or so. As best as they could tell, Dhrstyadymn was hardly twenty-three or twenty-four, but right
then he looked so much older. Older and tired. Or, perhaps, she wondered, she just felt that way because things were no longer
the same between them.

Once, Dhrstyadymn had been her best friend. These days, though, he had grown distant. Panchali could not understand whether
he was trying to protect her from the many burdens she knew he carried, or if they had truly grown apart. She had thought
many times to ask him directly, to force him to share his life with her for his own sake. But to her that was the ultimate
admission of estrangement. Her brother would have to bare his soul of his own will or not at all.

‘What time is it?’ Dhrstyadymn suddenly asked, looking out of the window at the stars. The skies of Aryavarta served well
to keep track of the sidereal day, which all its nations followed. The day, which began and ended at sunrise, was divided
into thirty periods, or muhurttas. As though looking for a way to ignore what he would soon have to do, Dhrstyadymn allowed
his mind to abstractedly ponder the significance of the number thirty, which so dominated chronology: Thirty kashtiha made
up one kala, thirty kalas made one muhurtta, of which there were thirty in a day, and, finally, thirty days made a month.
Each kashtiha itself comprised fifteen nimisha, or blinks of the eye. The measurements then went into factors, rather than
multiples, with three lava making up a nimisha, three vedha making a lava. A vedha was measured as a hundred thruti, a thruti
being the time it took to integrate three trasarenu, or molecules, each
made as a combination of six celestial atoms, the most fundamental unit of existence itself.

Oblivious to her brother’s ruminations, Pan
ali followed his gaze and noticed that it was late. ‘Six muhurttas to sunrise,’
she estimated.

Dhrystydymn thought for a while longer and then said, ‘Come with me.’

A trusted attendant brought them their horses, discreetly saddled and retrieved from the stables. The two set out, leaving
Kampilya unseen through an inconspicuous gate between the palace wall and the army garrison.

Panchali kept quiet till they were a fair distance from the city and among open fields. She then pulled on the reins, making
her horse rear up and whinny in challenge. ‘Care for a race?’

‘Go!’ Dhrstyadymn instantly cried out and spurred his horse into a gallop.

‘Not fair!’ Panchali shouted and set off after him, laughing.

Their melancholy dispelled by the magical stillness of the moonlit
night, the two rode at a steady pace, heading south-east from Kampilya. They occasionally stopped to let their horses catch
their breath or slowed down to a serene canter in the moonlight as they conversed, but for the most part they rode in silence.
Panchali found herself enjoying the unspoken companionship that she had regretted as lost just a while ago and felt happier
than she had all day.

A little before dawn, Dhrstyadymn turned due south and into the large forest tract that formed a border with their westward
neighbours, Kuru and Surasena. Panchali followed without question as he led them into the deepest part of the woods. The soft
twitter of birds and the gentle susurrus of awakening forest life helped dispel the heavy, somewhat ominous, air. Beams of
sunlight shone through the occasional gap between the trees, trapping eddies of fresh mist and forest-dust in fragile sculptures
of light and shadow. For the most part, though, the forest was still dark and the horses carefully picked their way through
the thick undergrowth.

Without warning, the dark canopy overhead gave way to a burst of white brightness, and the thick air felt lighter. They stood
at the fringes of a clearing. Blinking, Panchali urged her horse into the open space. The semi-circular glade was filled with
stone debris and the remains of what looked like a lined pit or shallow well. The grass underfoot was young and green, but
grew only in patches. Some of the older trees overhead bore signs of charring.

She gasped. ‘Hai! Is this …?’

‘Yes. Father brought me here once, hoping it would stir my memory. It didn’t, though I tried. Rudra knows, I tried.’

Panchali looked around, suddenly feeling weak and frightened. Her life as she knew it had begun here, with fire.

Fire
. It had spread from the crumbling walls to the thatched roof in moments. Panchali remembered every detail, as if it had happened
slowly and she had been an engrossed spectator. She had not screamed. She was terrified, but some instinct had told her to
get out because she had to live. Fumbling around in the smoke, her vision hazy, her hand touched another’s. Her brother’s.
She knew, somehow, that he was her brother. She clung to him in relief, the will to live no longer just her own.

They did not speak, not a word, but both of them knew what had to be done. She found her thick, woolly cloak on the floor
and tried to wrap it around them both – ineffectively, for she was too short and her brother too tall. He bent down to pick
her up in his arms and bundled her close to his chest. She covered them both as best she could with the thick material, letting
it fall over her brother’s head and around them in a protective mantle, which she held shut with her hand. With whispered
words that might have been a prayer, her brother stepped through the fire towards the faint patch of light and colour, which
they hoped was the doorway.

After that all she remembered was a blurred flash of images. The two of them laughing, breathing deep of the clean, smokeless
air, glad to be alive. People milling around, trying to put out the fire. A couple moving toward them, the man embracing her
brother as
though he were a gift from the Divine, while the woman cried at their pitiful state – blackened faces, mild bruises and burns,
and a fair amount of disorientation and shock, all of which could easily be set right.

‘Welcome, my children. Welcome, Dhrstyadymn, the future of Panchala, and its saviour,’ the man had declared. ‘We’re your father
and mother, my children. We have been praying incessantly to the gods, the Benevolent Ones who’ve brought you to us.’ At that
moment, the statement had sounded no less believable than the suggestion that anyone could escape alive from that infernal
blaze.

Right away, the two siblings had left with their newfound parents and their royal retinue for the capital of Panchala, Kampilya.
That night, and for many after that, they stayed in one of the smaller palaces on the way, although, as Panchali later found
out, Kampilya had been but half a night’s ride away. A few hours after they arrived there the man who had declared himself
their father, King Dhrupad, asked to see them in private. He greeted them with warmly and served them wine himself. No attendants
were present, nor was the queen. Even though she had still felt bewildered by all that had happened within the past day, Panchali
knew, with an instinct that she could not explain, that all of this was most strange.

After some awkward small talk, to which Panchali and Dhrstyadymn had simply contributed with silent nods, Dhrupad had gently
but pointedly asked them, ‘Tell me, what can you remember from before the fire?’

The siblings had confessed that they remembered nothing, not even the names they may have had. All they knew was they were
brother and sister, and that too was a feeling rather than the certainty of knowledge. Dhrupad, however, had been relentless
in his questioning, asking if they recalled where they used to live, whether it had been warm or cold there, their dwelling
large or small, whether they remembered any of their kin, if they spoke any other languages, how old they were, where they
had been schooled, and many such details, in an attempt to kindle their memories. At the end of the night the two had remembered
nothing that could point to their
prior identity. It nevertheless took many such nights of inquisition before their father had been satisfied.

At length, he had smiled and declared, ‘You are born of my penance and the sacrificial fire. You are blessings from the Divine.’

At that moment Panchali had hesitantly inquired, ‘What’s my name?’

Dhrupad was taken aback, as if the thought had not crossed his mind in all these days. Flippantly, he declared, ‘Panchali.’

It was bland, but fitting, Panchali had decided. After all, she had neither memory nor identity. She only was, as her name
meant, a woman of Panchala.

The very next day, they had left for Kampilya.

Hardly had Panchali settled into the royal palace than Queen Gandavati sent for her. Panchali had rushed over, driven by respect
and a dutiful stirring of affection for the woman who was now her mother.

The Queen came straight to the point. ‘We’re hardly mother and daughter, Panchali,’ she began, ‘but we share this much, that
our lives shall never be our own.’

She gave a hollow, chilling laugh, and continued, ‘I told Dhrupad that we should have picked up orphaned infants, that you
are both too old. Whether you remember your past or not, you are who you are, and it’s too late to mould your characters,
your nature. But then, when did my husband ever listen to me? Yes, there were times when I could have sworn he almost felt
love, especially in those months that I carried the Crown Prince in my womb – the same Crown Prince whose right you and your
brother have now irrevocably taken away. Nevertheless, I am thankful to you both. You may not be aware, but it’s an open secret,
and one sanctioned by scripture, that kings in need of an heir may ask other men … men of nobility, such as great sages, to
sire children in their wives …’