The Rise of Hastinapur (3 page)

She was aware of the stillness behind her for a moment, but she did not look back. Then she heard his step recede from her toward the door that opened into the corridor. When the attendant came bearing the silver bowl with the coronet on it, she lifted it carefully with her fingertips and looked at the big green emerald that stood atop the snaky arrangement of diamonds and rubies. It looked very much, she thought, like a peacock’s feather.

She set it on top of her head. Then she walked to the mirror.

TWO

A
mba kept her lips woven together with an iron will for as long as she could, but eventually emotion won over pride, and soon after the palanquin had reached the edge of Khandava, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed like a child.

The song of the palanquin bearers carried an easy, joyful rhythm. As Amba wiped her tears she tried to follow the words but realized that she could not. The fishermen of Hastinapur spoke Sanskrit mixed with strange guttural sounds and wheezes. Even today, Mother Satyavati’s speech carried those marks.

Thoughts of Satyavati brought back thoughts of the royal court. Before stepping out, she had checked herself in Salva’s mirror. She had never, until this evening, thought of herself as a possible queen of a kingdom. She was taller than most women her age, and she still had at least a year or two of growing up. Her cheekbones were the right height, and though her forehead was a bit too broad for her liking – which meant that she liked to place the spot of vermillion further up above her eyebrows instead of between them – her hair was richer and darker than that of either of her sisters.

She was big-breasted, bigger than most women she knew. That was the one thing that Salva had liked about her body. That night on the terrace of the north fort, after they had got past the guards and were lying on their backs together, looking at the crescent moon, he had slid his hands over her breasts and caressed them.

She had big hips too; someone had told her that big hips were good for child-bearing. Her legs had once been strong and shapely, when she had been thirteen and had been used to riding her ponies on Kasi’s fields, but in the last one year she had neither ridden nor run very much. Once she got to Hastinapur she decided she would get back to exercising her body – an hour of weaving for the arms, perhaps an hour of spinning to keep her back from tightening up, and an hour of riding, even if it was within the palace walls. During her short stay there she had once inspected the stables, and had been impressed by the dark horses that had come from Kamboja, the rocky kingdom up north.

She had never been called beautiful by many. It was her mouth – too wide to ever curl into a pout no matter how much she tried – that gave her whole face a grotesque, mannish appearance. As a child she had hated standing in front of the mirror, especially when accompanied by Ambalika, easily the prettiest of the three. But as Amba had grown into a young woman, she had taught herself the art of making her eyes and nose assert themselves more – by wearing kohl and nose rings – and of downplaying the mouth – by not applying any beautifier to it at all.

The palanquin stopped, and Amba heard the gruff voice of the head rider. ‘Enough with your singing!’ he barked at the bearers. ‘We shall pass in silence. And pray to your gods that we do not run into a pack of wolves.’ The palanquin bearers whispered to one another in hushed tones for a few moments, then fell quiet. Amba noticed that the sounds of the forest had died too.

She hoped that the bearers would begin their merry singing again, because the quietness made the voice inside her head that much louder. One thought had been nagging her at the corner of her mind, a thought that she had deliberately pushed aside every time it piped up. But now she had to let it come out, for her very future may depend upon it.

It was to do with what people had been telling her for quite some time now. Mother Satyavati said it, Bhishma said it, her old maid in Kasi said it, so did her father – and even Salva today said it:
she did not understand the ways of men
. Now she was going back to Hastinapur with an emerald coronet perched on her head, assuming that she would become queen, but would she? Vichitraveerya was a man, and so was Bhishma. After she had kicked at the honour that had been placed at her feet, would either of them allow her to just walk in and take her place by Vichitraveerya’s side?

If Salva was right, if Bhishma thought that Amba belonged to Hastinapur, then he would have no qualms in taking her back. But if Salva was wrong, and if Vichitraveerya thought the same way as Salva and rejected her because she was ‘another man’s property’, then she would have to face the same predicament again. Only then she would not have a palanquin to sit in and cry. Perhaps the regent of Hastinapur would be kind enough to send her off to her father’s palace, but alas, her father too, was a man.

Where would she then go?

Her hand went up to the coronet on her head and fingered the fine diamonds. A nameless fear took root in her heart. It slowly swelled in size and grew so heavy that she had to lie down on her bed, bobbing up and down to the beat at which the bearers walked. Suddenly she was thankful for the silence. It may not come to it, but she had to be prepared for the worst. Now she had a night ahead of her to plot her way to Hastinapur’s throne.

Ambika and Ambalika would be her rivals, but she had no fears about them. She would trounce them because she knew how they thought. No, more than her sisters, she would need to know how Mother Satyavati would think and move, what Bhishma and Vichitraveerya would say. She would need to enter, and fully understand, the minds and worlds of men.

It could not be impossible. Mother Satyavati seemed to have done it. Her old maid in Kasi had once told her that men were simple beings with straight, narrow desires. It would be nice if she could be taken back lovingly at Hastinapur, but if she was not, she would have to be prudent and bargain for a place to stay instead. If she were to get for herself a section of the palace – no, even just a room in the palace – if she could just place herself so that she would be part of Hastinapur’s first family without being
in
it, perhaps with time, she could manoeuvre some pieces here and there and see what would happen.

For instance, one immediate advantage that she enjoyed over her sisters was that she was more sexually mature. Ambika’s breasts were only just forming. Ambalika still had puberty marks on her cheeks and forehead. They could flame passion in the loins of no red-blooded king. But she, Amba, was another matter. Being a waiting-woman in the court of a kingdom she was supposed to rule would be a hitch, but it would be a temporary one if she did the right things. It was not unforeseen for a king to have children by waiting-women; such born babies were sent away to fostering in distant kingdoms. But what if the king had a son by a waiting-woman who was not just of high birth, but was the eldest princess of a Great Kingdom? What would happen then?

Her spine tingled in spite of the warm night breeze that flapped the yellow side curtains of the palanquin. Her eyes grew heavy– a sign, she thought, that her mind had ceased to worry. She had drawn her battle lines. She drifted away on the sounds of wheezes and grunts from the palanquin bearers, and as she teetered between sleep and waking, she saw herself walking through a dark and tortuous tunnel, at the end of which, in the distance, she saw the stone-studded, glittering throne of Hastinapur. Vichitraveerya sat on it to the left, resting his arm, and when he saw her he smiled and beckoned to her to sit by his side.

Amba rubbed her stomach with her palms three times – the way her old maid had once said women should while praying for sons – and went to sleep.

‘You have come back, my lady,’ said Vichitraveerya. He had the slender build of the Kuru kings. His wrists bore the marks of a bow-string, and his fingertips were rough and brown. The vast plains of Hastinapur encouraged open warfare, and her kings learnt to ride a chariot and to string a bow before they knew their way around their mothers’ breasts.

‘My lord,’ said Amba, bowing low. ‘I have realized the folly of my ways.’

‘Did you? Or was the king of Saubala not able to afford the bride price that we demanded for you?’

His small eyes were peering at her. He wore his hair long so that it grew all over his ears and covered them. He had a firm nose, an inquisitive and charming mouth, and eyebrows that looked like they were carefully drawn with a kohl pencil. None of his features by themselves appeared like Mother Satyavati’s, but the manner in which he carried himself reminded Amba of her. He would have made a fine maiden, she thought, if he had been born one.

‘I cannot lie to you, my lord king,’ she said. ‘I had given my heart to Salva, and he said he had given his to me. But today I have known what a poor illusion love is.’

‘Oh, you have, have you?’ said Vichitraveerya, motioning her to sit down. He adjusted his white morning robes so that they would not get entangled between his legs. ‘I do not bear you any ill will, my lady.’

Amba tensed. She placed both her hands on top of each other on her laps, and waited.

‘I did not bear you any ill will when brother Bhishma told me of your wish to leave. I had not even met you. Perhaps I should have; I would perhaps then not have let you go.’ As he entwined his hands, Amba saw that his fingers were bereft of rings; strange for a High King. ‘But what is the need to mull over the past? The truth is that I did let you go, and you did go.’

‘But I have come back, my lord.’

‘You have, but only because the man you wanted rejected you, my lady. Is that not so? If the king of Saubala had pride enough to reject you because you were won by another, how much pride must I, the High King of Hastinapur, possess?’

‘Since you are the High King, Your Majesty, and since you are a much bigger man than Salva, I thought you would see it prudent to rise above your pride.’

‘Ah!’ said Vichitraveerya, laughing shortly. ‘You speak well, better than your sisters. How much older are you than they?’

‘Ambika is two years younger, my lord, and Ambalika one year younger still.’

‘It shows. I would have liked nothing better than to take you as my queen, but for your journey across the Yamuna to Salva’s court.’

‘He has not touched me, my lord king, of that I swear,’ said Amba.

‘That is not my concern!’ said Vichitraveerya, anger rising in his voice. ‘The men you lay with are entirely your choices, Princess. In the Kuru line we believe a maiden is free to choose her men.’

‘Then can I not choose you as my husband, my lord?’

‘We
also
believe in a man’s free choice,’ said Vichitraveerya. ‘If I take you as my queen now, my name across North Country will be sullied.’

What name was he referring to, Amba wondered. North Country did not so much as mention Vichitraveerya’s name. Whenever Hastinapur’s throne and her great plains were spoken about, people sang praises of Devavrata the valiant, of Bhishma the heroic. Men from smaller kingdoms, especially further down toward the Eastern Sea, even thought that Devavrata was the High King of Hastinapur. When the champion had ridden at the head of his army a few years back along the length of the country, demanding salt and fish from the kingdoms of the shore, he had been received in a manner befitting a High King.

Vichitraveerya, however, did not have a name outside of Hastinapur. Did he not know that? Or perhaps this was just another of those games that men played. She restrained herself from speaking of this matter; she would do well now not to anger Vichitraveerya.

She said, ‘I shall give you a son, my lord; a son that would match Devavrata in battle.’

His eyes lit up at her words, and she knew at once that she had hit a spot. How humiliating it must be for a king to be overshadowed by his brother in all aspects? Chitrangada and Vichitraveerya were, after all, sons of a fisherwoman; how could they ever become kings, even though circumstances may have placed them on the throne? She saw from his eyes and his suddenly rigid posture: she now had his attention.

‘I do not ask for favours, my king,’ said Amba, looking up at him beseechingly, her hands still placed on her lap. ‘If you take me for your wife, I will give you a son for whom even Devavrata shall have to step aside. In my veins runs the blood of the great Rama, the mythical king of Kasi who once united and ruled over all of North Country. I shall bear you a son who will be the Rama of this age.’