Pregnant King, The (8 page)

Soon after Prasenajit’s death, Pruthalashva had gifted away his cows, his horses, his gold, his silver plates and copper pots and moved to Mandavya’s hermitage where no one addressed him as king. He spent his time teaching young Kshatriya boys the art of making the
perfectly balanced bow. Or he spent hours staring at the forest, his final destination.

When Yuvanashva was seven years old Shilavati visited Mandavya’s ashram and introduced him to his grandfather.

The old man looked at the young boy and then his young mother. ‘Shilavati, I hear you are a good king. Vallabhi has prospered under you. You have even organized an elephant hunt. The Kshatriya council respects you more than they respected me. And you encourage young Kshatriya warriors to hunt tigers. I have heard of the temples you are building, the fairs you are organizing, the festivals you are celebrating and the large number of pilgrims and traders you are attracting.’

Shilavati saluted the old king. ‘I know you did not want a woman to take care of your kingdom.’

‘Men are foolish. We actually believe that just because someone has a moustache they make better kings than someone with breasts. The Angirasa knew better. Mandavya knew better. I am glad I listened to them. I wish my son had not died. But had he lived, and had he confined you to the women’s quarters, as he would, in foolish male pride, Vallabhi would not be what it is today. I hear you have asked the sculptors to make a new gate for the city.’

‘Yes. With the image of Ganga on one side riding a river dolphin and Yamuna on the other riding a turtle. On top is Lakshmi.’

‘Where is Vishnu?’

‘Here, right in front of you. We call him Yuvanashva. Your grandson.’

Pruthalashva looked at his daughter-in-law. She had
a way with words. She looked so beautiful, though draped in undyed fabrics reserved for widows. A line of sandal paste stretched from the bridge of her nose across her broad forehead to where the parting of her hair would once have been. She had chosen to shave her hair and used one end of her sari to cover her tonsured head. The chain of gold coins and tiger claws round her neck gave her an air of authority, though she did not really need it.

Bending down Pruthalashva looked at his grandson and said, ‘Hurry up. Grow up. Get yourself a wife and give me a great grandson. I don’t have much time. The forest calls me.’

Pruthalashva waited. And waited. And waited. He heard of the swayamvara at Udra and the excitement in Vallabhi when Yuvanashva entered the city through the new gate with his new bride on his elephant. He heard of the grand marriage and the feast that lasted for twenty-seven days. He heard everything except what he wanted to hear. After five years, he grew tired. He went to Mandavya one day and said, ‘Yuvanashva’s seed stubbornly refuses to sprout.’

‘Maybe the field is barren.’

‘Surely Shilavati realizes this. Why has she not yet got him a second wife? Does she not realize that she is fettering me?’ Mandavya did not reply. ‘Anyway, I reject this fetter. Great grandson or no great grandson, I wish to go.’

‘Please wait. See the face of Yuvanashva’s son and then go.’

‘Bondage takes many forms. I will not be enchanted anymore.’

All the young students and the old teachers of
Mandavya’s ashram sat under a great banyan tree and watched the old king set out on his last journey. At the edge of the hermitage, Pruthalashva undid his clothes. Then he picked up a lump of earth, threw it back over his shoulders, and then walked ahead without looking back. He seemed relieved to find freedom at last.

‘Maybe he will meet the Pandavas in the forest,’ said Vipula to this father. That was a possibility. After gambling away their kingdom, the five brothers and their common wife spent all their time following the trail of hermits, moving from hermitage to hermitage, meeting Rishis, talking to them, trying to make sense of their miserable lives.

‘I don’t think he will care,’ said Mandavya.

Mandavya informed Shilavati of her father-in-law’s departure. ‘Pruthalashva entered the third phase of his life without waiting for his grandson to be born. Now he has entered the final phase of his life without even waiting for his great grandson to be conceived. This is not good. The fabric of dharma in Vallabhi is unravelling itself.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ said Shilavati. ‘The rains come on time and leave on time. The dharma of Vallabhi is intact.’

Mandavya remembered what Vipula had said when Pruthalashva walked away into the forest, ‘Here is a man in hurry to give up his throne that was always his and there is a woman clinging to the throne that was
never hers.’ He had admonished his son for speaking of the queen that way. Looking at Shilavati’s nonchalance in this matter, he wondered…

‘Five years have passed. The princess of Udra has not even suffered a miscarriage. Perhaps the soil is barren; you must consider another field for the royal seed,’ said Mandavya rather forcefully.

‘Five years is not a long time. Let us be patient,’ said Shilavati chewing her betel nut and gesturing to her maids to wave the peacock fan more rapidly.

But the crows were not patient. Five years was a very long time. A loss of over sixty opportunities to be reborn. They cawed and cawed. They flapped their wings and glared impatiently in Shilavati’s dreams.

‘The wife may be barren but the mother is not,’ said one crow to another. ‘Two fields separated by a generation. What does it matter where we spring from? Maybe Shilavati should consider offering herself to a suitable man, maybe Mandavya. She still bleeds and he is not that old. Through her at least one of us can be reborn. Her husband may be dead but the field still belongs to his ancestors.’

Shilavati fell sick the next day. How could the ancestors even think like that? But they did. And they spoke their mind without guilt or shame. The dead have no feelings. No conscience. Just the intense desire to take birth once again. Rebirth. Life. Senses. Feelings.

Mandavya was acutely aware of Shilavati as a woman. Her breasts were full and hips wide. She could have borne Prasenajit many sons. If only he had not died so young.

Only once had Mandavya felt desire for the young widow queen. It had happened eight months after
Yuvanashva’s birth. The priests felt the royal infant should be placed on the throne to reassure the people of Vallabhi and to tell the Devas that the throne was not empty. But the child howled every time he was taken from his mother’s arms. So the priests decided it was best the mother of the king sat on the throne and the king sat on her lap through the ceremony. She was told to hold the bow for her son. The silver parasol was raised behind her. The yak-tail fly whisks were waved by the most beautiful maids. Instead of the red bindi of brides on her forehead Shilavati had a vertical tilak made of sandal-paste stretching from the tip of her nose right up to her brow. It was the only indicator that she had no husband. She looked so regal, so powerful, so dignified. Everyone looked at her. She belonged on the throne. The young sixteen-year-old bride chosen by the Angirasa. No one noticed the child until he started to cry and demanded the attention of the court. ‘If only she was a man,’ said the Kshatirya council.

‘Thank the gods that she isn’t,’ Mandavya heard himself say. Those who overheard him were alarmed. An embarrassed Mandavya realized Kama was shooting an arrow into his heart. He caught the arrow mid-air and broke it. ‘She is like my daughter-in-law; I will not submit to the vulgar arrows of Kama,’ he told himself.

Mandavya had a wife. A large dark lovable woman named Punyakshi, youngest daughter of a Vaishya elder, given away to Mandavya along with a cow and a bull, a way of marriage in keeping with the way of the Rishi.

Punyakshi knew she was a ritual tool for her husband, like his water pot and fire sticks and reed mat, a tool
to explore the secrets of the cosmos and share it with the kings of Vallabhi. She accepted her fate without question. She loved the hermitage outside Vallabhi. She sat with her husband when he performed the yagna and when he looked up at the sky to decipher the meaning of the stars. She took care of his students like a mother and offered herself to him in her fertile period. He came dispassionately, whispering, ‘This is a yagna. Nothing more. Your thighs are the altar. Your passion the fire. My seed the oblation to my ancestors.’ After the offering of seed, he would walk away without once caressing her.

On the night of the day Mandavya saw the young Shilavati on the throne he hugged his wife passionately. He bit into her neck and let his tongue explore her ear. He buried his face in her hair, in her breasts, between her thighs. She felt his fingers spread apart the altar. She felt herself devoured by the flames of his passion. This time, after the offering of seed, he lay with her, holding her. Punyakshi felt his tears. What secret was he hiding, she wondered. ‘Let me be the vessel that will hold your venom. Let me be the churn who will purify your soul,’ she whispered in his ears.

They never spoke of that night again.

Shilavati sent for Mandavya when she recovered from her illness. ‘My spies tell me that the people of Vallabhi are saying that the king of Vallabhi has been denied the grace of Ileshwara because he is king in name only.’

‘Yes,’ said Mandavya.

‘Do you think it is true?’

‘I ask myself if it is your son’s destiny or your desire which comes in the way of Ileshwara’s grace.’

Shilavati looked straight at Mandavya, ‘Tell me, if I were a man, when would I be expected to retire?’

‘After your son has a son.’

‘And does my son have a son?’ she asked. Mandavya smiled, realizing the queen was twisting ancient laws to hold on to the throne. He remembered what the Angirasa had said about Shilavati: a girl who had never been taught the dharma-shastras but whose understanding of dharma would put all the kings of Ilavrita to shame. ‘So let us be patient,’ said Shilavati softly.

‘Perhaps the prince is sterile, unfit to be king,’ said Mandavya.

‘How dare you say such a thing about my son?’ Shilavati’s eyes flashed fire. Then it was her turn to smile. She had underestimated the Acharya. He had trapped her. The only way to prove her son’s virility was to get him another wife. One always blames the cow first. ‘Tongues are wagging on the streets of Vallabhi no doubt. We need something to distract the people. A grand royal wedding with feasts and entertainment. Tell me, how can we quickly find a second wife for my son?’

Mandavya said, ‘The bards say that the daughter of the king of Vanga is destined to bear a son. Astrologers of Vanga, Kashi and Vallabhi have confirmed it. Her father is willing to sell her to the highest bidder. Let us bid for her.’

It was not unknown in Ila-vrita for fathers to sell their daughters. Galava had once asked Yayati to give him a thousand black horses to pay his tuition fees. Yayati had only two hundred. Not wanting to disappoint Galava, he had said, ‘Take my daughter, Madhavi, in place of the rest. She is destined to bear four kings. Surely each one is worth two hundred horses to the men of Ila-vrita who wish to be father of kings.’

‘How much am I worth, father?’ asked Pulomi, the princess of Vanga.

The king of Vanga replied without shame or guilt, ‘You are priceless, my child, but your womb is worth seven hundred cows, three hundred bullocks and a dozen bulls.’

Pulomi burst into tears. The king of Vanga wanted to hold her, hug her, comfort her but he restrained himself. He had a kingdom to think of. A mysterious disease had killed most of the cows in his land. When cowherds squeezed udders of the surviving cows, they found blood and pus oozing out instead. The bulls had become blind and could barely stand. The bullocks were too weak to pull a plough or a cart.

‘It is the wrath of Shiva,’ declared the Brahmanas. ‘He has spat the poison in his throat into your cattle sheds. Maybe we forgot to let him partake of the leftovers of our yagna. Maybe we insulted his dogs, kicked them out without offering them milk. Until we appease him he terrorizes us. We must offer him raw unboiled milk of seven hundred cows.’

‘Where are the cows?’ asked the king of Vanga.

‘In Vallabhi. And they will come to us if you accept Shilavati’s offer.’