The Rise of Hastinapur (33 page)

THE CITY OF GOLD

PROLOGUE

GANGA SPEAKS

T
he tale of the Great War is much like the river herself. It breaks off in places, and each tributary flows at its own speed to lands unheard of, until it returns and joins the main river hundreds of leagues downstream. The tale of Amba is, perhaps, the longest such branch, and it would not return to the trunk until long after the weddings of Pandu and Dhritarashtra are but distant memories, until their wives begin to give birth to their children.

In Pritha’s tale, by the time of Durvasa’s visit to Shurasena and Mathura, Dhritarashtra was already married. Hastinapur had already taken her spot atop the pyramid of Great Kingdoms in North Country. But it was not always so. There exists a rocky land to the far north-west, beyond the lands of Madra and Kamboja, which first settled on the bank of River Sindhu but later migrated inward. They call this kingdom Gandhar, the city of gold.

This was the time when Devavrata was set upon uniting the kingdoms of North Country, so that he could one day lead an army of men against the might of Meru. One of the biggest mistakes that Devavrata made in plotting his battle with the dwellers of the mountain was that he thought that we would not watch him, that we would let him assemble the forces of Earth without raising so much as a murmur.

It was only at the very end, when I came to the battlefield of Kurukshetra to take his mortal body away, that I saw the realization in his eyes, that I, his mother, has been his bitterest enemy all his life, that every moment he has lived on Earth, he has pit his wits and strength against me. I longed to tell him that when I schemed against him, I did not do so as his mother but as the lady of the river whose duty it is to protect and serve the mountain. I longed to tell him that besides being a spiteful foe, I was also his dearest friend, the one person who loved him most, the one person who would shed the most tears at his death.

But before I could find the words, he breathed his last, with the same hurt look of knowing in his eyes. I have often thought of that day in the years past, if I should have hastened to remove from his mind the thought of his mother as a wicked crone, but I doubt if he would have understood, much less forgiven me. So, perhaps, it is all for the good.

For one to win, another has to lose. We play this game of winning and losing with such desperate will that we often forget there is only one victor at the very end. If one were to travel down this line of time far enough into the future, or into the past, one would see only the form of the Goddess, standing alone, watching in silence. And yet we go through most of life fighting our little battles, rejoicing in our petty victories, only stopping when the shadow of death darkens our door.

At that moment we come to know that it was all but futile, and we forgive. We forgive all. On her deathbed I found Gandhari smiling and tearful, and her eyes told me that she had made her peace with the world, that she had come to see both those she vanquished and those who vanquished her with the same eye. But she was not always like this. I remember the time when she sat on the throne of Gandhar and ruled with great hope and wisdom. I remember her and her brother, who were just children but fought with more valour than the bravest of warriors for the good of their land.

I must beckon the listener westward now, and a few moons back in time, so that he can peer through my eyes into the royal castle of Gandhar.

ONE

E
ven after night had fallen, the rocks of Gandhar seemed to glimmer red. Gandhari felt that if one were to pour water upon the flat surfaces, it would hiss and rise up in smoke in a moment. Travellers to Gandhar’s court complained to the queen – only jokingly, but there was truth to even the mildest of quips – that the crumpled land was so hot that they had no need for fireplaces, that whenever they stopped to eat, they could spread their cotton sacks on the ground and break eggs on them. She had heard many such tales in her life, and at first she would jump to her kingdom’s defence, but now that she had been on the throne for a good four years, she had learnt to let them pass with a smile. Gandhar was the wealthiest kingdom in all of North Country and they all knew it. If they wanted to poke fun at its weather, so be it.

She ran her fingertips down the length of the copper net that draped the window. The holes shone with hanging water drops – the only leftover signs of that evening’s rain. She leaned closer to the net and blew at it, sending silver freckles flying out into the night air. When she had been a child, she would sit on this very sill for long hours waiting for the rain, and when it came, she would watch the net fill up with films of water which had swirling purple spots in them. She would lean her temple against the cold, rusted net and watch.

In the distance she saw the flickering yellow fires standing in a row, along the path that led to the mines. Gandhari tried to squint so that she could see better, but her sight had deteriorated these last few years. When she had been young she remembered she could see well enough to spot the swallow nests atop the branches of the oak trees that towered over the rocks. But now the whole tree was but a smudge. The mendicant that attended to her had said that her eyes would get worse and worse until she reached the age of twenty. Three more years, then, she thought.

She had given up thinking about her illness. The first few days after the mendicant had visited them for the first time – when she was about four or so – she had burrowed her head inside her pillow every night and cried. But thirteen years was long enough to accept things that one did not like and could do nothing about.Now, she could even view it with a sense of indifference. Yes, it would have been a larger issue had she been a man, for it would have impeded her from hunting and fighting. But since she was a woman, even if she had been entirely normal, her soldiers would not have allowed her to enter the battlefield or the woods.

For her duties she needed no more than to look a few feet ahead of her and recognize her courtiers. She had already trimmed the size of her assembly to eighteen from her father’s forty-four, and often she asked them to come to the chambers after night had fallen. Shakuni, her brother, came with them and tried to light up a fight, as usual.

The muscles on her face tightened when she thought of him. By the end of next year, on his sixteenth birthday, he would ascend to the throne, and she would step aside to be married off to some king or the other. But the boy carried in him much anger toward the state of Hastinapur, and if he were to do something to disturb the delicate balance that existed between Gandhar and the Kuru kingdom, he could well be overthrown by the people.

She sighed; snubbing him and hoping that he would stay quiet would no longer do. He had to be tutored. She would have to be patient with him.

She remembered that autumn afternoon years ago, when he had been seven and she nine, when he had raced past the rocks and climbed the oak tree, calling out to her to come. She had only trudged behind him, blinking and squinting. By the time she reached the tree, Shakuni had already climbed up to the top, and he was pelting her with dried twigs. She yelled at him to stop, but when he did not, she bent down, picked up a stick, broke it in two, and hurled it into the air.

It missed him by quite a large distance, and he laughed. ‘Come on, sister, is that the best you can do?’ Through her narrowed eyes she could see him crawl along the branch, legs wrapped tight around it. He reached out for some smaller branches and broke them in his tiny hands. But when he threw them at her they hit her on the back of her neck, her arms, and left red scratches on her skin.

‘Do not do that, Shakuni!’ she said. ‘Or I shall tell father to lock you up in the stables!’

‘That is all you can do. You have no fight in you, sister, do you?’

‘I do!’

‘You do not.’ He sent another twig – a big one this time – flying at her shoulder. It drew a wail from her.

‘You rascal!’ she said, and bent down to pick up it up. When she looked up to face him, although she only saw him as a black fuzzy spot against the blue sky, she leaned back and hurled it at him with as much power as she could muster.

She had laughed at the spiralling twig as it travelled toward its target. She had laughed as it hit him and a look of pain arose on his face. But the next moment she had seen his arms wave, and his legs release the branch. He had tried to cling on, but his fingers had slipped on the tufts of moss that coated the bark. When he had known he was falling, he had shouted to help. She had stood there, watching him drop with a thud and a groan, not on the grassy side of the tree but among the rocks.

She could see the tree now, set against the blue night sky. Whenever she recalled what happened that afternoon, her ankles ached, and they did now too. That day she had turned and run as fast as she could all the way to the palace, and when the guards asked her what had happened she had mutely pointed at the tree.As the men picked up their spears and rushed away from her, she had fled into the palace, not stopping until she had crawled under her bed and lain on her side, crumpled up into a ball. Only then had she realized that her ankles felt as though needles were being driven through them.

Today, she felt that same old pain. She dragged the chair toward her so that she could sit. Just when her breath returned to normal, a girl entered her chamber and announced that her ministers sought her audience.

The four of them entered and took their seats. Gandhari walked away from the window and took the central throne, motioning them to come closer so that she could see them better. Adbudha, her mining minister, moved to the edge of his seat and spoke first. ‘I have paid the mines a visit just today, Your Majesty, as per your command yesterday, and I have seen to its operations myself.’

‘And?’

‘We have mined seven hundred and eighty eight
tulas
of gold this year.’ He had little black eyes that retreated deep within their sockets when he spoke. He looked around him derisively. ‘It is not, as it was suggested yesterday, any more than it was the year before. In fact, last year, we mined upwards of eight hundred
tulas
.’

Gandhari turned to the mighty figure of Chyavatana, who was in the process of tending to the curls in his moustache. ‘Did you hear that, Chyavatana?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Eight hundred
tulas
last year, was it, Adbudha?’

Adbudha nodded angrily. Gandhari could feel for him. The other three had hounded him as a pack during the last hearing, and they had all forced him on a long ride to the mines just to verify what he had said all along – that the mines had produced the same amount of gold this year as they had in the last.

While Chyavatana pondered in silence, Gandhari gestured at Adbudha for the parchment in his hand. Glancing through it, she saw that he was right; unless, of course, Adbudha had pocketed some of the gold himself.

‘However is that possible?’ asked Chyavatana, bringing out a parchment of his own from inside his pink silk tunic. ‘The prices at our schools have risen, and so have the prices at our mendicants.’