The Rise of Hastinapur (39 page)

G
andhari buried her head in her pillow and wept. The attendants had drawn the insect screens on the windows, so the moonlight threw a chequered shadow on the wall. The silk curtains danced in the dry breeze that blew from across the mines. Darkness had descended upon the whole city, but in the distant northern corner, fires still burned at the entrance to the mines, and if she cocked her ears, she thought she could hear the thumps of spade against rock. She had never gone inside the mines; her father had said it was too dangerous for a maiden. Shakuni had been all but ten when he first visited the mines. She still remembered the envy with which she had burnt that day.

The mines meant everything to Gandhar. When they were first discovered – during her grandfather’s reign – the first thing that the king had done was to order walls and towers to be erected all around them so that they could not be taken. The outer wall surrounding the city had been extended to encircle them, and every year from then to now, a few towers would be added to the cluster of defensive structures. Twice in the last seventy years had kingdoms from the north – Aswaka and Bahlika – come with catapults, but each time Gandhar’s army had been strong enough to drive them away.

Even today, Gandhar’s shrunken military strength would quite easily ward off any direct attacks on the mine. Even Hastinapur would not succeed in taking it, if she tried. They would have known that, of course. Why else would Bhishma ask for a tribute if he thought he could take the city? She did not believe in his righteous sermons about war, but she had to believe that Hastinapur could ill afford an all-out war at this time. It was much easier to hold the reins in his hand and demand tribute after tribute from them every month, threatening to let loose social unrest if she refused to comply.

She tried to narrow her eyes so that the brown smudges on the ceiling would become sharper. When her eyes began to hurt, she gave up with a sigh. What would Gandhar do with a blind queen and a lame king? Even with his limp, Shakuni compensated with quickness of mind. What had she done? If she had heeded his words, would they not have uncovered all this dirt much earlier? Her father had warned her on his deathbed that ruling a kingdom was not the job of a maiden. Marriage, valiant sons, beautiful daughters, managing the running of a household – that was what maidens did and must wish to do, not hold council with ministers and govern the state.

The offer of marriage had surprised her. Now that all of Gandhar’s wealth belonged to Hastinapur, she had no doubt that Bhishma’s kingdom was the foremost in North Country, perhaps even ahead of Panchala. So it would not be all bad if she accepted the proposal; she would then be queen, and her sons would rule the fertile lands between the two great rivers. Her father would have approved if she had said yes; it would have secured Gandhar’s future too; if she married into the royal family of the Kurus, they would not think of destroying her maternal home.

Why had she said no, then? Yes, it was partly the anger at the realization that the thief had now become the master, but there had been something else too. While Gandhar’s safety would be assured, it would never again achieve supremacy among the kingdoms of North Country. Gandhar would forever be second to Hastinapur if she said yes, for Bhishma would take over the mines and leave Gandhar just enough to keep her alive. It would assure Hastinapur of generations of untold wealth, whereas Gandhar would need to be content with being secure.

But Gandhar had not yet lost all. They still had the mines and they were nowhere near empty, so if more miners could be employed from among the populace, they could mine more gold than they did now, and in spite of the tribute that they had to pay Hastinapur, they would still have enough left over. Perhaps over a few years they could amass enough gold to put Gandhar back on the path to wealth again.

That would mean pulling out men from the farms, from the cowsheds, from the looms, and from anywhere they could think of, and that would make all the other industries suffer. That would make them lean a bit more on Hastinapur, which would not do. What Gandhar needed was to move away from Hastinapur in trade, and yet produce enough gold to get wealthy
after
having paid the tribute. Right now, Gandhar depended on Hastinapur for everything – from milk and fruits to furniture. Bhishma had been right; what did Gandhar have for herself right now, apart from the mines?

Her eyes went back to the brown figures on the ceiling that looked like bubbles mounted on each other. Back when she used to be a child, the images had been sharp; from memory she knew that there was an archer aiming at a cavalryman who held a lance in his raised arm. They had neither eyes nor ears, these figures, and often as a child her father would tell her that archers represented the bad men of Hastinapur while the cavalrymen stood for the noble warriors of Gandhar. The archers from the plains, fighting on foot, could never hope to oust an armoured man mounted upon a horse or an elephant, her father had said, and for that reason Hastinapur would never take Gandhar.

Her eyes welled up. Hastinapur
had
taken Gandhar, and they had done so without shooting an arrow.

Gandhari woke up in the morning in better spirits. She had had a dream that had left a pleasant sensation in her mind, and all through her bath and breakfast, she hummed to herself songs that her father used to put her to bed with during the old summer nights while servant girls stood on either side of her bed, fanning her with bird feathers.

She was almost done with breakfast when her waiting-girl came and announced the arrival of Bhishma.That surprised her – she had assumed that the prince would find a suitable time today to make a silent exit. Dabbing her mouth with linen, she waved at the girl to let him in. As she waited, a distant part of her cried out in hope that he would leave Gandhar alone. She would not even ask for the robbed gold if that were to happen, she realized suddenly; so desperate had she become.

She did not bother to stand when he arrived, in a white upper garment with his quiver of arrows fastened behind his right shoulder. Though these archers were proficient with both hands, they had a preference, clearly. She gave him a nod to take his seat, and he shook his head at her with a smile.

‘I shall not stay long, Your Highness,’ he said. ‘I have a long day of riding ahead of me, and I must leave if I am to reach Hastinapur by nightfall.’

She took no pains to hide her distaste. ‘I woke up today hoping that you had already left, my lord. What is it that brings you here?’

He hesitated. ‘I … I could not but help think our council yesterday ended on a bad note, my lady. The presence of your brother, Prince Shakuni, did not help, if I may say so.’

‘I do not recall Shakuni saying or doing anything yesterday that I did not approve of, sir, so I am afraid I do not quite know what you mean.’

‘Perhaps it was me, then,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Perhaps I have been uncivil in my manner yesterday. The ride here was not smooth, and it was very long; perhaps we should have waited till this morning before we spoke.’

Gandhari said, ‘If you still have the same offer for me, sir, my answer is still no.’

‘Do think of it, Your Majesty. I know what you must think of me, but what I have done is no different to fighting. What I have engaged you in is a war of the mind, and you have lost. If all wars could be fought this way, without shedding any blood, would your citizens not be happy indeed?’

Her voice became angry without her knowledge. Her eyes smarted, and her fists closed into tiny balls. ‘Do you not have shame, sir, for being born a Kshatriya and speaking of battles of the mind? If Hastinapur had waged war on Gandhar and if they had won our gold from us, I would have gladly given myself to you. But you play games of intrigue and deceit, and you seek to drape them as virtuous deeds. I shall not agree to them.’

Bhishma frowned, lowered his whispery voice even further. ‘Of what use is a virtuous war when it kills thousands of people, my lady? And these games of intrigue and deceit, as you call them, have not shed a single drop of blood. I have taken your gold, yes, but you are welcome to try and take it back from me again.’

‘If I ever do, I shall come with an army and raze Hastinapur to the ground,’ Gandhari replied. Bhishma smiled at this, and it drove her mad with fury.

‘Do not think I cannot, sir,’ she said.‘I need not remind you of what happened during the battle of Kamyaka. Gandhar’s men are filled with valour, and if I call them to lay down their lives for their land, they will not say no.’

‘But why must anyone give their lives, my lady?’ said Bhishma, springing up to his feet. ‘Your biggest wealth is not the gold that I have stolen from you, Your Highness, it is the lives of your citizens. The gold that I took from you has no value; only human life has value. Do you not understand?’

‘If that is so, Bhishma,’ she said, spitting out his name, ‘if it is true that the gold you have taken from me has no value, give it back to me. Why have you spent twenty years stealing something that has no value?’

He averted her eyes, and said in frustration: ‘It is valuable because everyone thinks it is so. And now Hastinapur has become wealthy only because all the other kingdoms accept that gold is wealth. But why does it have to be so, my lady? We use it for
nothing
. We make coins out of it, and we hoard it in our vaults.’ He shook his head, even as his eyes bored into her. ‘That is not wealth.’

At once she felt a great weariness come over her. ‘I do not have the strength to argue with you on matters such as these, my lord,’ she said. ‘I know what you will do if I marry the prince of Hastinapur. You will first take over the mine, and you will only pay Gandhar a pittance for using it.’

‘But even if you do not marry the prince of Hastinapur, my lady, you will still give us all the gold that we need.’

‘But the mine belongs to us!’ She realized she was on her feet too, though she did not remember having stood up. ‘We shall mine more gold than we give you, and slowly we will build our wealth back to where it was.’

‘It will take you generations.’

‘Generations of freedom, yes.’

‘You call having to give tribute every month to Hastinapur freedom?’

‘It is better than to give you the mine itself, sir, and you know that too.’ His face was inscrutable, though, and when he shook his head she saw in him the same expression his father had so often used while talking to her. A wave of resentment lashed inside her, and she had to use all her restraint from picking up the cutting knife and hurling it at him.

‘If you want to mine more than you do now,’ he said, ‘you have to rely more on Hastinapur for your food and clothes and furniture. You will be deeper in captivity if you do not accept my offer, my lady.’

‘We shall take our chances.’

‘But if you do become Hastinapur’s queen, my lady,’ he said, bowing to her for the first time since his arrival, ‘the very earth you touch with your feet shall become golden. Gandhar and Kuru will be friends, and together they shall become the strongest ruling force in North Country. We can unite all of North Country, my lady, all of it!’ When she did not reply, he took a step closer to her. ‘You have heard of the legendary king Rama, have you not? In his time, all our kingdoms were one, and all the people in the land were happy. Should we not create that kingdom here again?’

She wavered, caught in the maze of his words. But he was just bluffing, she thought. If he had wanted Gandhar to be friends with Hastinapur, he would never have stolen their gold. He wanted to be friends, perhaps, but he also wanted Hastinapur to be ahead of Gandhar, and that she could not allow. All of this – his whole charade – was not about uniting North Country; it was about spreading the rule of Hastinapur to all of North Country.

‘It is Gandhar and its future that interests me, Prince Bhishma,’ she said coldly. ‘Uniting all of North Country will not happen till the end of time.’

‘It is in our hands now,’ he said, his voice tinged with desperation. ‘It is in
your
hands.’

‘I do not want it!’ she cried. ‘All I want is for Gandhar to be prosperous, and all I know, sir, is that you have stolen our wealth! We shall do all in our power to get it back from you, and I promise you, that we shall not stoop to your level.’

For a full minute he did not speak. Gandhari heard her breath slow down, and her fingers uncoiled, leaving marks at the ends of her palm. ‘Is that your final answer?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

He nodded, and went down on one knee. ‘Then I shall take your leave, my lady, and I shall await your tribute.’ Without waiting for her to speak, he got up, turned and marched out of the room. For a long time after he had left, the sound of his footsteps rang in her ear.