The Palace of Illusions (52 page)

It fell upon me, the wrenching task of guiding my husbands to our dead. There was no one else who knew what I longed to forget: where and how they'd fallen, what their dying gestures had been. I pointed out the mangled bodies: Ghatotkacha, who in the extreme pain of his end had thought only of our good; Uttar and his father Virat, who had sheltered us in our distress, not knowing the ultimate cost of that hospitality; my father, his eyes open in death, his mouth drawn back in a grimace of disappointment, for he did not live to see the vengeance he had spent his entire life planning. Reaching the mutilated corpse of the young Abhimanyu, I described to my husbands how bravely he had fought even when overwhelmed by so many experienced warriors and saw pride mingle with the sadness on their faces.

But as we proceeded, I grew confused. Which of the dead should I single out, and which should I ignore? What of Salya, uncle to the Pandavas, who had helped us the best he could even though he was tricked into fighting for Duryodhan? Drona, his headless body twisted in his chariot, who had once taken their child-hands in his and taught them how to bend back their first bows? I looked into the blood-encrusted face of Lakshman Kumar, Duryodhan's son, his eyes wide with surprise as though he hadn't expected death to win this game of tag, and it blurred into the face of one of my boys.

And now we came to Karna's body. I kept my face averted, but it seemed my heart would burst from agitation. I couldn't bear to think that there was no one to mourn this great and unfortunate warrior's passing. His friends were all dead, Kunti could not claim her kinship with him, and I could not express my grief. My husbands remarked casually on the smile on his face. Why, Nakul asked, did his body not give off a stench like the other corpses? Arjun spoke magnanimously of his valor, for it is easy to praise those you hate once you have killed them. When Yudhisthir said, I wonder who his parents really were, and if they know he's dead, I couldn't bear it. I fell to my knees and said, “Husbands, you must cremate every warrior who died in Kurukshetra with due honor. You must pour ghee into the fire for them all, and offer rice and water so that their spirits may be at peace.”

Yudhisthir agreed at once, but as he called for arrangements, we heard a voice behind us.

“No,” it cried. “You have no right to touch my sons, whom you butchered along with their loyal friends. I will not allow you to offer prayers for them and thus lessen the punishment that awaits you in this life and beyond. I will take care of my own dead.”

It was Dhritarashtra. He had always been stalwart and tall in spite of his infirmity. But overnight he'd aged—spine bent, hair grayed, forehead marked by grief ‘s ravages. But Gandhari, who led him by the hand, stood taller than ever. The anger on her face, ice-white as the scarf that covered her eyes, frightened me more than her husband's outburst. Her years of prayer and abstinence had given her great power. Would she use it now to harm my husbands? I reached for Yudhisthir's arm to warn him—but I was too late.

Everyone knows what happened next. How the old king, with piety on his tongue and murder in his heart, pretended to accept Yudhisthir's apologies, his promise that he'd be a son to them. He
held out his arms in a gesture of forgiveness, calling first for Bheem, who had killed every one of his sons. But once more Krishna saved us. He pulled Bheem back and gestured to his servants to bring out, instead, the iron statue upon which Duryodhan had so often vented his hatred. Dhritarashtra tightened his arms around it until he crushed it. Then he wept with genuine regret—for hidden behind the anger and envy, there still remained some concern in his heart for his brother's children.

Seeing this, Krishna explained his ruse and reminded the king that the Pandavas had been pushed unwillingly into war by his own son. “The least you can do to make up to them for all they've unjustly suffered at Duryodhan's hands,” he said, “is to truly forgive them and give them your blessing, so that their hearts might find peace.”

Dhritarashtra obeyed Krishna, but something broke in him as he touched my husbands' heads with the tips of his reluctant fingers. Perhaps the knowledge that until his death he would have to eat Pandava salt was too much for him. From that day on, he spoke little and gave up all kingly luxuries. He ate only once each day and slept on the bare floor, and though Yudhisthir entreated him many times to take his place as king in Hastinapur, he never again entered the sabha to sit on the throne he had so coveted.

And Gandhari? She was wiser than her husband. She knew that her sons had brought about their own downfall. But even wisdom is no match for a mother's pain. When Yudhisthir touched her feet, her rage manifested as fire, burning his fingernails black. And when Krishna snatched him away, she poured that rage on him.

“You were the mastermind behind my sons' destruction. Because of that, your own clan will destroy itself in the span of a single day. On that day, your women will weep just as the women of Hastinapur are weeping now. Then you'll know how I feel.”

I stared at her in shock, but Krishna said, with his usual equanimity, “All things must end some day. How can the house of the Yadus be an exception?” Then his voice grew stern. “But tell me, aren't you responsible for this war, too? Who indulged Duryodhan when he was a boy, instead of punishing him for the things he did to his cousins? Who couldn't bear to banish Sakuni—because he was your brother—from the palace even though he was an evil influence on Duryodhan?”

Gandhari bowed her head.

Krishna continued more gently, “Duryodhan broke his word again and again. He took from his cousins through trickery what was justly theirs—and then, after they'd fulfilled all the conditions he'd placed on them, refused to return it. You know this yourself. Isn't that why, when Duryodhan asked for your blessing just before he went to Kurukshetra, you didn't say, ‘May you win’?”

Gandhari was weeping
.
Krishna put his arm around her shaking shoulders. “Instead you said, ‘May righteousness prevail.’ I know it was difficult for a mother to pronounce those words. But you did the right thing. Now that your words have come to pass, how can you hate those who were merely the instruments of universal law, which ultimately must restore that which was out of balance?”

She turned to him then, sobbing against his chest. “Forgive me! That terrible curse—I want to call it back!”

“There's nothing to forgive,” Krishna said as he led her to her tent. “Whatever you pronounced—even that was part of the law.”

But what I remember most clearly are Krishna's words to the blind king when he insisted on cremating his dead by himself:
You call them
mine
, and you call the others
theirs
. For shame! Hasn't this been the cause of your troubles ever since the fatherless sons of Pandu
arrived at Hastinapur? If you'd seen them all as yours to love, this war would never have occurred.

Wasn't it the cause of my troubles, too? Of every trouble in this world?

We'd thought that the day was done with its surprises, but it had kept hidden in its recesses one final secret. As the Pandavas stood holding lighted brands, ready to begin the cremation of our children, Kunti came to them. Her eyes were bleak. Her voice held a quiet and terrible resolve.

“Wait,” she said. “You must begin the ceremony by paying respect to your eldest brother.” And as they stared in amazement and growing shock, she told them—though it was a lifetime too late— the truth about Karna.

39

After the war, the cremations. After the cremations, the remains given to the Ganga. It was there by the river, the last sift of ash and grit pouring from his fingers, that Yudhisthir fell into his depression. For thirteen years his life had been directed to this moment like an arrow released from the bow of a master archer. But when the arrow has shattered the target, what is left for it to do?

Though we all entreated him, Yudhisthir would not leave the riverbank and come to Hastinapur for his coronation. For weeks he sat staring at the devastated land where nothing would grow, thinking of the millions whose death-anguish had poisoned the air. But most of all he brooded on Karna, his own brother whom he'd hated for so long.

I stayed with him during those weeks, for I was afraid to leave him alone. Each day we'd discuss the same things, over and over, as though his mind were stuck in a rut too deep for it to climb out of.

“How delighted I was when he fell!” Yudhisthir said. “In my selfish glee I ignored the fact that on that very day he'd spared my life—and before that, the lives of Bheem, Nakul, and Sahadev. Why didn't I guess? Why didn't any of us guess? We rushed to view his corpse. We laughed and shouted our congratulations to Arjun, even though we knew he'd killed him unfairly. Ah, the terrible
sin of that fratricide will fall on me, not Arjun, for he only did what I wanted him to!”

My own regrets resurfaced as he spoke. If only I'd told him what I knew earlier, how much heartache I could have prevented him now! But I couldn't afford to wallow in remorse. I needed to help Yudhisthir. In all our years of marriage, I'd never seen him so dejected—no, not even when I was insulted in Duryodhan's court.

I ignored the sting of that thought and said, “You acted from ignorance, not malice.”

But he refused to listen. He held me by the shoulders, his fingers digging into my flesh, his gaunt mouth working. “How could my mother, so wise in everything else, have kept such a matter secret? How can I trust her again?”

There was a time when I'd have gained a certain pleasure from hearing him speak thus of the woman who, more than any of the other wives, had been my rival. But even the thought of such pettiness was distasteful to me now. A knot had unraveled in my heart when I saw Kunti at Karna's funeral. She looked so worn, so ashamed, so beaten down. Besides, guilt flooded me at Yudhisthir's words. I, too, had kept the same secret that his mother had. How furious might he be with me if he discovered this?

I said, “It's not for you to judge your mother's actions. Who among us can know how terrified she must have felt when Karna was born?”