Authors: Kavita Kane
Karna's Wife
Kavita Kané
calls herself a true-blue Puneite, despite having been born in Mumbai and grown up in Patna and Delhi. Having studied and lived in Pune for many years, she considers herself as good as married to the city, where she now lives with her mariner husband, Prakash, two teenage daughters, Kimaya and Amiya, a friendly Rottweiler named Dude and a cat called Babe.
A senior journalist, with degrees in English literature and mass communication, Kavita is also a cinema and theatre aficionado. But writing, she confesses, is her only skill.
Karna’s Wife
is her first novel.
First published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2013
7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj
New Delhi 110002
Sales Centres:
Allahabad Bengaluru Chennai
Hyderabad Jaipur Kathmandu
Kolkata Mumbai
Copyright © Kavita Kané 2013
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted,
or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Printed at Parksons Graphics Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding
or cover other than that in which it is published.
This book is dedicated to my parents.
Aai
,
who made me what I am today
and
Papa
,
whom I hope to be like some day.
4. New Horizons: Karna and Uruvi
6. Friends: Ashwatthama and Duryodhana
17. Karna’s Kavach and Kundals
18. The Return of the Pandavas
It was that man again. That man, with his thick mane, brooding eyes and twinkling earrings, walked towards her, his gold armour glittering so fiercely under the blazing sun that it was blinding. His intense radiance threw tormented shadows, the wind suddenly whirling away the figure made spectral by the shadows, and snuffing it abruptly while she stood there, her arms extended, against the vast emptiness of sand…
She woke up with a start, shivering slightly, her eyes wide, her breathing turning to quick gasps. She had seen the same dream. Again. Over and over again. And each time the persistently vivid dream spawned a haunted restlessness, pushing her into uneasy wakefulness.
The night was quiet, the marbled bedroom quieter still, but Uruvi could almost hear the raging turmoil within her. She looked down at her arms—stretched and trembling, as if trying to grasp the intangible. As intangible as the elusive man in her dreams. ‘Karna,’ she uttered the name softly, and whispered it several times over, convinced that this was the man she had loved since the day she had first seen him.
She recollected her first sight of him—striding into the arena of the archery tournament in Hastinapur. The contest had been arranged by the royal patriarch, Bhishma Pitamaha of Hastinapur, to highlight the archery skills of his great-grandnephews, the hundred Kauravas and the five Pandavas.
Against the flaming halo of the dipping sun, the young man had immediately attracted the attention of everyone present. The bustling arena went abruptly still and hundreds of eyes fell on the youth. He looked serenely divine, swathed in an almost ethereal glow, his back straight, his head held high, his strangely golden armour gleaming as radiantly as his handsome face, while his earrings sparkled in the rays of the setting sun. He was tall—taller than Arjuna, the Pandava prince, but did not loom large like Bhima, the second Pandava and the strongest man in the kingdom. Lithe but muscular with broad shoulders and a trim waist, the young stranger with his thick golden brown hair appeared almost God-like to Uruvi. Saluting Guru Dronacharya, the royal teacher of the Kauravas and the Pandavas, and Kripacharya, the royal priest, he walked straight up to a plainly astonished Arjuna to announce grandly, ‘I, Karna, shall perform every feat with the bow and arrow that have just been shown now, but with greater skill.’ He then proceeded to do so with contemptuous ease.
As the Princess of Pukeya, Uruvi had a vantage view from the gold-leafed royal enclave perched majestically above the swarming crowd. Sitting amongst the regal entourage of the blind King Dhritrashtra and Queen Gandhari, Uruvi knew she had fallen in love with the stranger then and there—utterly and irrevocably. Mesmerized, she continued to stare at the handsome young man who was flaunting his phenomenal skills with more flamboyance than Arjuna. Uruvi was sitting next to Queen Kunti, the imperial widow of King Pandu of Hastinapur and the mother of the Pandavas. As her mother’s childhood friend, Kunti was Uruvi’s self-appointed foster mother.
‘Who’s he?’ Uruvi excitedly turned to the Pandava queen, who looked unexpectedly ashen and seemed to stiffen at her question. ‘Ma, are you not feeling well?’
There was no reply and Uruvi saw to her growing horror that Kunti had crumpled into a quiet faint. Thoroughly alarmed, and the stranger forgotten for the moment, Uruvi knelt over the prostrate figure, calling anxiously for help just as Vidura, the youngest brother and chief counsellor of King Dhritrashtra, took charge of the situation. Soon Uruvi was relieved to see her foster mother swiftly regaining consciousness. ‘It must have been the heat,’ murmured Kunti through parched lips, gathering her silken folds and her dignity quickly.
Reassured, Princess Uruvi peered down the gallery to watch what was happening below. The show was supposed to be a display of skills by the two groups of cousins—the Kauravas and the Pandavas. But this stranger, who called himself Karna, seemed to have stolen the glory from the Kuru princes, particularly Arjuna.
Uruvi watched Karna bow carelessly to the royal audience each time he strung his bow and effortlessly repeated the feats of Arjuna.
Prince Duryodhana, the eldest of the Kaurava brothers, looked visibly delighted, his swarthy face wreathed in a huge smile. For a man who rarely smiled, he looked unusually euphoric. He rushed to the young archer and embraced him like a long-lost brother, ‘Whoever you are, fortune has sent you to me. My brothers and I are at your command,’ he announced.
Events seemed to be happening too fast and decidedly not in his favour, realized an irate Arjuna. A promising and versatile warrior, he was the best Kuru archer. He blazed with an impetuous temper. ‘Whoever you are, you are an intruder! You have entered uninvited and yet you dare compete with us! You shall sorely regret your arrogance the moment you taste defeat. I shall trounce you in a challenge.’
Karna gave a mirthless smile and replied evenly, ‘What is the use of a competition if one cannot be compared with others? Talk is the weapon of the weak; release your arrows instead of hollow words.’
‘This young man is a great warrior!’ declared Bhishma Pitamaha in his deep baritone. ‘He has surpassed each of Arjuna’s feats.’
Arjuna looked almost apoplectic. Glancing at his mottled face, Princess Uruvi could not suppress a giggle. ‘Spoilsport!’ she dimpled. ‘Can’t face competition, can he?’
The mood of the tournament had radically changed; the air seemed to thicken rapidly with palpable tension. Having surpassed Arjuna’s feats, the stranger, encouraged by Bhishma’s pronouncement, was now challenging Arjuna to a duel.
Arjuna bristled angrily. He hurriedly bowed to his teachers, hugged his brothers and with his face flushed, stood ready for combat as Karna faced him.
The sun suddenly disappeared behind a huge dark cloud and it seemed as if it would rain.
‘No, oh, no!’ cried Kunti, getting up from her seat in nervous agitation. ‘They cannot fight…oh, no, they shouldn’t!’
‘Ma, please, it’s fair enough!’ cried Uruvi, rising too in her excitement. ‘If Arjuna is as good as that young man, or even better as he believes, what is there to be so scared of? And who is this young man anyway? He is absolutely wonderful. Oh, I am enjoying this! Now for the duel!’ she chortled in glee.
Vidura gave her a stern look, clearly disapproving of her blood-thirsty idea of enjoyment. ‘One of them could get badly hurt or worse, get killed because of immature egotism,’ he spoke to his sister-in-law Kunti, the mother of Arjuna. Kunti was extremely agitated and seemed clearly against the duel.
Like Uruvi, the onlookers were wondering about the identity of this young man just as Kripacharya spoke to him. ‘According to the rules of the game, only a kshatriya, a high-born warrior, can fight another kshatriya in a tournament,’ he declared, placing himself firmly between the two young men. ‘Arjuna, whom you have challenged, is a prince, the worthy son of King Pandu and Queen Kunti, the scion of the Kuru dynasty. Pray, who are you, son?’
Uruvi felt a sharp pain in her arm. Kunti appeared drained of colour while unconsciously gripping Uruvi’s upper arm, her fingers biting into the soft flesh. She was staring at the youth with a strange emotion, as if his answer was of tremendous importance. The audience was hushed as everybody waited eagerly for an answer. Only the youth remained strangely silent, staring at the horizon where the sun was slowly disappearing. His handsome face was sapped of its radiant pride.
His lips were clenched and his noble head was bowed, as if in shame. The proud archer suddenly appeared lost.
‘Why does he not say something?’ Uruvi exclaimed edgily. ‘Why doesn’t he reveal who he is?’
The stranger was rescued from unexpected quarters. ‘We all know this young archer outmatches Arjuna in skills. If the combat cannot take place merely because he is not a prince, I shall remedy it easily,’ thundered Prince Duryodhana. ‘I proclaim this youth King of Anga!’ And with that, Duryodhana performed the required rituals to crown Karna the King of Anga on the spot. ‘Now you are a king, a royal personage who can fight any duel or challenge any kshatriya,’ proclaimed Duryodhana, handing the new king his crown, his jewels and the royal emblem.