MAHABHARATA SERIES BOOK#2: The Seeds of War (Mba) (10 page)

Devayani flew into one of her old rages. She saw Sharmishtha emerge from the house to call back her sons. At the sight of her betrayer, she began shrieking like a wild thing. ‘How dare you? You are my slave! My servant! How dare you do this to me?’ 

Sharmishtha had no intention of backing down before her old nemesis. ‘I am far more than just your slave and servant. I am the true princess and if not for your manipulations, it would have been I whom Yayati married. He would never have looked at you twice if not for me. Even your first meeting was due to me! But since you regard me only as your slave and property then you should know that my being your slave means that I am also your husband’s slave. And that in turns means he is free to enjoy me if he pleases. And it pleases him very greatly, does it not, Yayati, my love?’ 

Yayati did not have the courage to reply and take either side in this battle of women, but Sharmishtha continued, speaking up for both of them. ‘You once had Yayati declared a rishi by your own father, so that he would be equal to you in status and you could be married. You chose him as your husband and insisted that he wed you. I did the same things. If what you did was right in dharma, then how can I be wrong? But while you did everything out of selfish greed, thinking of none other than yourself, I did what I did with mutual love and respect. Yayati may be your husband in name and law, but he is mine in love and affection. He goes to your bed only because he must, because it is his dharma as a husband to please you and his dharma as a king to sire heirs upon you. But to my bed he comes willingly and eagerly each afternoon, filled with desire, passion and love. These three children are the fruits of that love and that is why they blossom more brightly than even your own two sons!’

Devayani could not bear to hear anymore. Sharmishtha’s words had the ring of truth and for Devayani, this was the culmination of years of self-doubt. She rose from there and went back to her palace. When Yayati followed her there, he found her preparing to leave. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘You have caused me the ultimate insult,’ Devayani said. ‘I cannot live here another day. I am going home to my father.’ She left that very day, returning to Vrishaparva and prostrated herself before her shocked father, weeping miserably as she poured out her tragic plight. 

‘Adharma has won over dharma,’ she wailed. ‘The inferior have won, the superior have lost. My husband Yayati has betrayed me by fathering three sons on Sharmishta, my maid and slave! In addition, he has deliberately fathered only two sons on me, seeking to elevate his illicit mistress over his own lawful wife.’

Yayati was alarmed at the thought of how Shukracharya would react to this terrible news. He followed close on Devayani’s heels, arriving immediately after her. He arrived just in time to hear the tail end of Devayani’s impassioned plea to her father. 

Shukra turned to Yayati with a face like stone. ‘What do you have to say to this?’ 

Yayati hung his head with shame, unable to summon up any words. Anything he might say would only compound his guilt further and he could not deny the truth to the great preceptor of the asuras. 

Shukracharya took his silence and shamefaced aspect as proof of his guilt. ‘I see. You will recall that I once forbade you this very thing, knowing the distress it would cause my daughter. Had you copulated with any other woman, it might have been forgivable. But to have violated my sole request to you, made in trust and in good faith of your sense of dharma, this is an insult to me as well. You have succumbed to lust and indulged yourself without care for the consequences. By slaking your lust on two women you have lived two lives at once. Therefore, let your own lifespan be shortened to half. Even though you are yet young, let old age come upon you at once and may your youth be ended at this moment.’

No sooner had the guru pronounced the curse than a shadow passed across the sun shining through the palace windows, even though no cloud or bird was visible in the clear blue sky. When the shadow passed, Yayati’s handsome young face was lined and wrinkled, her body bent over with age and infirmity, his joints stiff, his back curved, his hair whitened, his eyes rheumy. 

Staring down at himself, he cried out pitifully. ‘Do not punish me so harshly, great one. I did nothing on my own. Sharmishtha commanded me to make love to her and said that she had vowed to bear children, therefore as her mistress’s husband she was within her rights to demand that I sire children upon her. Countless men do so in the exact same way, will you punish them as well? You yourself agreed at your daughter’s request that I was no less than a brahmin and therefore had to concede to your daughter’s request to wed her and sire children upon her. If I did no wrong then, how could I have done wrong by fathering children upon Sharmishtha? Is it not said by the learned that he who refuses to sire a child upon a woman who desires one is no less than a murderer of an embryo? What wrong have I committed in the eyes of dharma? How can you punish me thus unfairly?’

Kavya Ushanas rose to his feet, pointing a bony outstretched finger at the king. ‘Even if this were the case, you should have consulted me. Having been forbidden by me specifically to avoid bedding Sharmishtha, you had no business doing just that! You have no right to ask me for mercy now. It was my specific instruction that you disobeyed. By doing so, dharma itself has blinded her eyes to you!’ 

Yayati joined his wizened palms together, weeping pitiful tears, but the guru would not be moved. 

Finally Yayati struck upon an argument that even Shukra could not ignore. ‘By punishing me thus, you punish your own daughter as well, gurudev! For if I am old and decrepit now, then your wife has lost her young virile husband. What will she do with this ancient feeble body as her companion? You have cursed her as well.’

Shukra looked at his daughter’s face and realized that Yayati spoke truly. By cutting down Yayati’s youth, he had deprived his own daughter of her husband. But now that the curse had been uttered and taken effect, it could not be taken back. He thought quickly, arriving at a compromise. 

‘You may exchange your condition for any other youth if you desire,’ he said gruffly. ‘The only condition is that he must accept this state of old age willingly and without protest. You cannot force it on anyone.’

Yayati saw a ray of hope in his desperate state. He decided to press his advantage. ‘Then let me offer this willing person in exchange for his youth, the kingship of my own land. For I must give him something to compensate for the loss of his prime years!’

Shukracharya nodded. ‘So be it. But make this arrangement only with one of your own sons. In exchange for his youth, he shall rule your kingdom in your stead. As I have already promised to protect your heirs and see that no harm ever befalls them, I shall add to that the promise that whichever of your sons agrees to exchange his youth for your old age and infirmity shall enjoy long life, great success and fame, and produce numerous offspring of his own. These are my final words.’

8

Yayati’s change of condition made even the journey back home seem like an epic undertaking. Every jolt of the chariot, every hour of sunshine or of damp cold nightfall, every minor deprivation and physical discomfort felt like torture. In moments he had gone from a robust young man in his prime, filled with strength and virility, proud of his body’s abilities and his youth, to a decrepit sagging bent-over old man, barely able to walk straight, plagued by a dozen aches and weaknesses, beset by failing eyesight, hearing, impaired bodily functions. The full weight of old age had descended upon him like a boulder fallen from above. He struggled to merely cope one moment at a time. He knew that if he remained in this condition, a quick death was assured. He would not be able to live for long in the state he was in. All men grow old in their time, over time, with years and decades to gradually adjust to failing senses and impaired organs. Yayati had not even had a moment to register the full impact of Shukracharya’s curse before he was struck down by his condition. Even now, he was still struggling to accept the reality. 

Somehow, he made it home, shivering with chills and fever, wracked by pains and sprains, struggling to breathe, see, think, speak. It was all the royal vaids could do to keep him sane and functional. He was prone to ranting and raving, to berating the world for his condition, to self-pity and remorse. 

But he was inherently a strong, determined man. Gradually, he overcame the mountainous weight of his afflictions and summoned his eldest son, Yadu, child of Devayani and dearest to his heart. He sought to soften the blow of his condition by having his servants draw the drapes and dim the lamps in his chamber, covering his body with a blanket. But the overall effect was worse: the dim lighting, subdued atmosphere and attendants with faces that revealed their own sorrow at their king’s condition only served to heighten the impact of the revelation. Yadu reacted at the sight of his father very badly. He reared back as if struck by a snake, gaping with wide open eyes and mouth, nostrils flaring. He stared at his father as if confronted by an imposter, unable to accept the radical change. He could barely believe that this was in fact his own father. It took several moments for him to accept the fact of the curse and its terrible outcome. 

When Yayati spoke, in a wheezing voice wholly unlike his robust baritone, Yadu was even more dismayed. 

‘Son, my first-born, my best-born. Do not fear me. All this you see, the old age, the wrinkles, the grey hair, are the result of a curse imposed on my by my father-in-law, Kavya Ushanas.’

‘Grandfather did this?’ Yadu said, astonished. 

Yayati nodded, breaking into a coughing fit that alarmed the young Yadu even more. Barely grown to manhood, he was of that age where all old people appear to be of a different race or species, barely human. To see his own father thus, the same father whose powerful physique and commanding personality had provided a model to which he himself aspired, altered overnight, was the worst shock of his young life. He wondered if Yayati was going to die as a result of the intense coughing. He looked dead already.

‘Yes,’ Yayati said at last, clearing his throat with difficulty. Unnoticed by him but observed by Yadu with great disgust, he had spots of blood on his chest and chin from the intense coughing. An attendant wiped it away but Yadu thought he could still see the places where the spots stained his father’s garment. ‘Grandfather did this to me. It is a long story and I shall explain it all later. But first I have something to ask of you.’

‘What is it?’ Yadu asked doubtfully. He was still wrestling with the realization that this was now his father, this old broken-bodied feeble being who seemed barely able to survive a coughing fit. 

Yayati was taken aback by his son’s abrupt tone. He had envisioned his son as his savior, imagining that Yadu would throw himself upon his chest, weeping out of sorrow for his father’s plight, and offer to do anything in order to restore his father to his former state. Instead, Yadu was staring at him with horror, keeping a safe distance and acting as if he were possessed of a disease that was contagious. ‘There is only one condition under which the curse may be rescinded. If my son agrees to exchange places with me. I wish you to do this for me, my son. Take this condition upon yourself willingly for a thousand years. Let me be young again. When the thousand years are over, I shall again return your youth to you and accept my fate as an old man.’

Yadu stared at his father silently for a long moment. ‘Why not accept it now? You are already made old.’

Yayati was irritated by the question. He had expected unconditional support and acquiescence, not this suspicious hostility. ‘Because I am in my prime! I still wish to enjoy life, to live fully. You know what I looked like yesterday, son. Now look at me! White hair, white beard, flabby flesh, wrinkled skin, ugly, thin, weak, worthless as a man or a warrior, incapacitated by ailments and infirmities, beset by failing organs and countless aches and pains…I do not deserve to be like this!’

‘And I do?’ Yadu asked. 

Yayati was struck dumb. What could he say to such a question. 

Yadu took a step forward. ‘Father, I love you, this you know already. But do you mean to say that you deserve your youth and strength, but I do not? Do I deserve to be like this? With white hair, beard, flabby, wrinkled, ugly, thin, weak, worthless…all the rest that you describe?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘No, father. I cannot do this for you. It is too much! I cannot become old in your place!’

He turned his face away, both disgusted and ashamed. Disgusted by the very thought of becoming like the creature in the bed before him – for Yayati’s abrupt change made him seem less like a man and more like some creature that had suddenly taken Yadu’s father’s place overnight – and ashamed at his own weakness. 

Yayati felt shock, pain, disappointment. He had thought his son capable of giving up his life for him. He knew he would have given his own life to save Yadu, if the circumstances arose. It was another matter that the only scenarios in which he had expected to have to sacrifice his own life were those entailing battle and combat. Not a sacrifice of this magnitude. This was more than mere death, it was living hell. But despite his understanding of his son’s decision, he was overcome by a wave of self-pity and anger. 

‘If that is so,’ he shouted feebly, his voice cracking and turning hoarse. ‘If you will not aid your father in my time of need, then you deserve no share in this kingdom, Yadu! You and any offspring you have in future shall have no part in my domain. I disinherit you from this moment onward!’