THE MAHABHARATA: A Modern Rendering, Vol 2 (65 page)

Evil omens attend his going forth and in the sky, which seem ablaze, the seven planets seem to fly at one another to do battle.

FIVE
THE TWO BROTHERS 

Karna cries to his sarathy, “Fly at the enemy, O Shalya! I will kill Arjuna today and win this war!”

Shalya remembers his promise to Yudhishtira that he would dishearten the Kauravas, while he fought for them; most of all, he would discourage Karna. Now he is free to speak his mind. He laughs sharply, “Why reach for the stars, Karna? Your ambition flies away with your reason! It is easy enough to talk like this before the fighting begins. Wait until you hear the thunder of the Gandiva. Then we will see how brave you are. I know Arjuna, how powerful he is: but the way you go on, it seems you do not.”

Karna says serenely, “I won’t argue with you today, Shalya. Ride on!”

Karna learnt the art of reading the omens of the earth and the sky from his guru Bhargava. He sees them inauspicious all around him. He is beyond caring; why, he welcomes what he sees. Knowing how cruel his life has been, he goes willingly toward death’s velvet clasp.

Shalya has not finished. “Krishna and Arjuna are like the sun and the moon. You are a firefly beside them. How do you dare challenge Arjuna, except that your good sense has left you?”

Karna growls, “I have sworn to let you speak freely, my lord; but truly, your name suits you well
¹
. Your tongue is like a dagger! For which side do you fight that you praise the enemy and mock me? No matter. You cannot move me from what I have set out to do today.

Besides, Shalya, I too know something of fate. I know there is such a power and that it is awake when the world sleeps. Its ways are strange and inexorable and men are puppets in its hands. Yes, when I saw Bheeshma fall and Drona die, I knew it was from fate; not they could resist her. But even if we cannot decide the time of our dying, at least it is in our hands to determine how we die: whether as cowards or heroes. By the way we die, in some measure we can triumph over fate.

I know why you speak like this to me today. It is because your heart is with your nephews and you want to make me doubt myself. There is no need for it, O king, because I know already that Arjuna will kill me: because dharma and Krishna are both with him. I am a doomed man; don’t darken my last few hours in the world by praising Arjuna.”

The astonished Shalya falls silent. At the battlefront, Karna deploys the Kaurava army with vision and elegance. Across the field, Dhrishtadyumna and Arjuna form their legions in a vyuha to subdue the one Karna forms.

Yudhishtira says, “Let us fight them one by one. Arjuna, you ride against Karna. Bheema, you kill Duryodhana today. Nakula, you fight Karna’s sons. Let Sahadeva meet Shakuni, Satanika face Dusasana and Satyaki his cousin Kritavarman. Dhrishtadyumna must contain Aswatthama, or he will raze our army by himself. I will confront Acharya Kripa.”

Once more, conches blare across Kurukshetra and, their eyes full of death, the armies run at each other. It is the seventeenth day of the war and today the roar of the soldiers is just an echo of what it had been on the first day. Both forces have vastly diminished and tired as well. There is hardly any valor left in the men’s hearts, but only prayer and the grim will to survive another day.

What remains of the Trigarta army, which swore to kill Arjuna, it seems ten lives ago, charges him again. He rides against them and makes short work of that dispirited legion, killing many, scattering the rest in the hot breath of his arrows.

Away to his left, another warrior is a wild star on Kurukshetra. Karna, too, is a legion on his own and not a soldier who meets him in battle escapes with his life. At his chariot-wheels ride his sons: as bright as their father, as formidable. Sushena and Satyasena are beside him and Vrishasena behind him. They are like a fiery diamond, the four of them; they cut blandly through the enemy, leaving numberless corpses in their wake. Dhrishtadyumna, Satyaki, Draupadi’s sons, Bheema, Shikhandi, Nakula and Sahadeva all combine to hold up Karna and his sons. But today, Karna’s sarathy is quite as magnificent as his archer is and the Kaurava Senapati is uncontainable. Blood leaps in vivid garlands in the morning sun, around Karna it flows in rills.

Bheema breaks through on a flank and cuts Satyasena down in a fiery storm; the boy’s chariot breaks into flames and he himself has his head struck off by a shaft from his mighty uncle’s bow. Roaring that he was avenging Abhimanyu’s death, Bheema shoots at Vrishasena and Sushena, as well, crippling their chariots and forcing them to run. The brave Vrishasena returns at once in a fresh chariot and guards his father’s back again. Karna melts the Pandava army like his sire does the snow on the Himalaya in spring. Enemy soldiers run screaming from him, or else, die.

Seeing Karna raze his legions on that seventeenth day, Yudhishtira rides at him, his gentle eyes flaming. Yudhishtira hails the older brother he does not know with harshness quite alien to his nature. He fears this enemy the most. This is the warrior whose very sight makes the Pandava’s blood run cold.

Yudhishtira cries, “Sutaputra! Dare you compare yourself to my Arjuna? I hear Duryodhana began this war because he counts on you to win it for him. Come, Suta, show me your valor! Let me save Arjuna the trouble of killing you.”

Karna turns to him. A slight smile on his lips, he gazes at Yudhishtira for a long moment, almost in a reverie. Yudhishtira waits, impatient for his challenge to be answered with fight. At last, Karna says slowly, “Ah, you are a great man, Yudhishtira. Though you will hardly believe me, I am happy to spend this moment with you, even if it is in the midst of this infernal war. I greet you, O Kshatriya, as one warrior another!”

Karna raises his bow and they fight. At first, inspired by his terror of his opponent, that he is the one who might kill Arjuna, Yudhishtira fights like a Deva. He strikes Karna unconscious in his chariot. Shalya wheels away briefly from the encounter. Karna jumps up again and now he lifts his archery so Yudhishtira cannot withstand him at all. With razor-headed shafts he kills the Panchala princes Chandradeva and Dandadhara, who rode at Yudhishtira’s chariot wheels.

Satyaki and some others fly at Karna from two sides. He is invincible. No one has seen such archery yet on Kurukshetra. Karna brushes the Yadava aside and confronts Yudhishtira again.

Not Yudhishtira, who has always feared Karna, ever imagined that he is such a bowman. But he hardly has time to think: in a flash, his own bow is dissected and his armor struck neatly off his chest. Karna wounds him sharply with a clutch of fine, short-range arrows that make him cry out in pain, as they cover his handsome body in blood. They never pierce him deeply or threaten his life.

Recovering quickly, Yudhishtira picks up a javelin and casts it at Karna like an angry thought. But it seems his enemy sees the lance come at him for an hour and has forever to raise his bow and cut it down. Yudhishtira flings another four javelins at Karna, each one aimed at his heart. In a languid blur, Karna cuts them down, laughing softly. Karna’s chariot draws ever closer and he shoots down Yudhishtira’s flagstaff and banner, so they fall out of his chariot into the dust; and with them, the Pandava’s honor.

Yudhishtira stands helpless before his enemy. Karna has him in the eye of his next arrow; he draws his bowstring to his ear. The war around them freezes; this, surely, is the end. Then, Karna lowers his weapon, rides closer still. Yudhishtira stands at his mercy. Karna reaches out his bow and touches his brother with its tip, in contempt, in tenderness. The moment is like death for Yudhishtira.

Karna says, “You are truly a high-born kshatriya, a scion of the House of Kuru, the eldest Pandava. But it seems you are no match at arms for this lowborn sutaputra! Look, your life is in my hands. That, my lord, is because you are more of a brahmana in spirit than a kshatriya. So don’t challenge your betters on the field of war. Now go back to your brother Arjuna and remember that you are not Karna’s equal. I spare your life. Go.”

Yudhishtira wonders if those are tears he sees in Karna’s eyes! The Pandava stands petrified by the scathing disgrace. Karna turns away and rides off to assail the Pandava army again, with sublime ferocity.

Bheema has seen the shaming of Yudhishtira and his eyes turn scarlet. Smashing his way through the Kaurava army, he rides madly at Karna. He is so furious no sound will come from him. Shalya sees him coming and says to Karna, “Bheema rides at us in wrath. I haven’t seen him like this, even when Abhimanyu died.”

Karna smiles, “Yudhishtira is his God and he can’t bear to see him shamed. All the Pandavas will die for the eldest one. Come, we must fight him.”

Bheema breaks on him. He overwhelms Karna and the Kaurava Senapati faints. Now a volcanic roar explodes from Bheema. Sword drawn, he springs from his chariot and rushes at the fallen warrior. “I will cut his tongue out for what he said to my brother!”

Shalya stands in his way. “Stop, Bheema. You have struck him down and that is revenge enough for Yudhishtira. Remember he spared your life once; don’t demean yourself by attacking him when he had fainted. Besides, your brother Arjuna has sworn to kill Karna. Would you have him perjure himself?”

Growling, Bheema turns back to his chariot and rides away. In a moment, Karna opens his eyes. He springs up and seizes his bow. His hands shake and he says to Shalya, “Ride at Bheema, I must answer him!”

Some way off, Duryodhana sees Karna’s chariot flying toward Bheema and he sends his brothers, fierce Kauravas, to fight at Karna’s side. These are nearer Bheema than Karna is and they reach him first. Bheema turns on them with such a smile. He croons at them in welcome and then he is at the sons of Dhritarashtra. He excoriates them with his arrows; he smashes their heads into vivid pulp with his mace. Their screams ring across the field and by now, he has lost count of how many he has killed. Roaring, roaring in ecstasy, drenched in his cousins’ blood, his clothes, his face stained in rich crimson, Bheema looms on Kurukshetra. By the time Karna comes near him, the other Pandavas have surrounded their brother. The battle disperses.

The Trigarta Samsaptakas challenge Arjuna again: they have the knack of confronting him whenever he is about to ride at an exceptional Kaurava warrior. Now, just when he is going to ask Krishna to ride at Karna, Susharma and his horde appear around him. Arjuna kills a thousand Samsaptakas, but Susharma himself is a master of the devastras. Fighting obsessed, he presses Arjuna hard, while the Pandava kills half his army. At last, Arjuna strikes Susharma unconscious in his chariot and his sarathy bears the Trigarta away, the last straggles of his legion fleeing behind him.

Arjuna is about to ask Krishna to take him where Karna rules the field, littering it with the dead, as if each life counted for less than nothing: when Aswatthama rides on to Arjuna’s path. Hailing each other, they begin to fight. Aswatthama casts an occult dome of arrows over Arjuna’s chariot; until nothing can be seen of it and there is perfect darkness within.

Arjuna manages to keep those shafts from breaking in on Krishna and himself. Krishna’s eyes glitter in the gloom. He rages at his kshatriya, “Everything I said to you has been a waste! Your love for your guru means more to you than your very soul. You see Aswatthama and your hands fumble at your bowstring. Perhaps you would rather see me killed than answer your master’s son!”

With a cry, Arjuna shrugs off his reluctance and the pity he feels for Aswatthama, who lost his father yesterday. The Gandiva in his hand is blinding; he is the sun rising to dispel the brahmana’s night of arrows. Arjuna smashes the dark cupola and overwhelms Aswatthama. Drona’s son swoons and his horses bolt from the field.

SIX
IN YUDHISHTIRA’S TENT 

Arjuna turns back to the Kaurava army. Dandadhara, prince of Magadha and his brother Danda charge the Pandava. But they are like jackals, after he has fought Aswatthama the tiger. Arjuna strikes the first Magadhan prince’s head off with a crescent-tipped arrow and fells his brother with a shaft through his throat.

Another company of Samsaptakas rides at him, like a refrain in the horrible song, which is this war. Susharma is not with this legion and Arjuna makes short work of them, killing a hundred and the rest run. Krishna cries, “We must fight Karna, victory lies beyond his death.”

“Ride at him then, Krishna! I am ready.”

As they go, the gandharva horses obeying their dark sarathy’s thoughts, they see Aswatthama, recovered, ride back into battle. A powerful and inordinately proud kshatriya, the Pandya king confronts him. Arjuna and Krishna watch helplessly as the brahmana kills him with eight arrows that ruin his chest and pin him to his chariot-head. He has fought like ten men for the Pandavas and his is a loss. No time to mourn him; like death’s wind, they fly toward Karna. Aswatthama sees Dhrish-tadyumna across the field and rides at his father’s killer.

The Gandiva hums in Arjuna’s hands, as he cuts his way to where Karna reigns over Kurukshetra. Like Yama’s dire thought, Karna’s chariot skims across the field, with Shalya inspired at his reins, Shalya quick as light. Krishna, who sees deeply into the tragedy of that warrior, is moved by the spectacle of Karna at war.

He says to Arjuna, “Look at him, like a dancer! How graceful your mortal enemy is, how awesome. Not for long shall this earth be blessed with heroes like him. How splendid he is, in every limb, every movement. I could just stand and watch him.”