The Thirteenth Day (27 page)

‘He’s dead. That’s all that matters.’

‘He’s dead, Radheya. At what cost? There can be no peace with the Pandavas now. No hope of conciliation. We’re doomed to kill our cousins, or die in the attempt. But they’re not your family, are they? Of course, you don’t care!’

He walked away, flinging the mace to the ground.

I called out to his back as he walked away.

‘I care about Suyodhana. What about you?’

M
y head was paining when I woke up. I was in the back of a chariot that wasn’t mine. The charioteer provided answers, ‘Lord Satyaki, sire. He found you and told me to take you back.’

‘Is...is the battle over?’

‘A little while back, sire. Yes’.

‘What happened?’

He was silent. I spoke gently.

‘Tell me what happened, charioteer.’

‘We weren’t...I think…I believe they... sorry, sire…’

Numbness has a way of protecting you. An invisible coat of paint that washes over and covers any chink or crack of emotion that may otherwise show on your face. I listened dully to his desperate attempts to soften the blow. Then I remembered.

‘The boy. What happened to Abhimanyu? Did we break the vyuha?’

Silence, again.

‘Speak man, or I’ll rip your tongue out.’

His voice trembled, ‘He’s...he’s no more, sire. I’m sorry.’

The numbness prevented me from breaking down in front of the unknown charioteer. I felt a wave of tiredness hit me. I wanted to sleep desperately, but I had to know what happened.

‘Tell me everything you know, charioteer.’

By the time we reached the camp, I had learned all about the way the Kauravas had murdered my nephew. My body lifted itself off the chariot and walked to the council tent, drawn like a heavy plough by my leaden senses. If Arjuna wasn’t there, he would be in his tent. If he wasn’t in his tent, I would scour the battlefield. I would enter hell, but I would speak to him.

I was the eldest. What would I tell him? What could I. My mind flitted across the familiar constructs and phrases we use in lieu of emotion to convey our regret of a person’s bereavement. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’ ‘He was brave till the end.’ ‘He’s in a happier place now.’ I couldn’t possibly tell him any of this.

An old sage I had met once had spoken to me on the nature of death. At the time, I remember being inspired by his conversation, by the resolute ambivalence of it, by the fact that he had no clear answers, and yet had clarity.

He had spoken in contradictions. He told me then that living in fear of death was to fear living itself. That life and death were bound to each other and yet separate from another. People went about their daily lives denying death’s existence, and yet it was all around them all the time. He had told me that grief should not be felt for those who had died, but for those who were living. After all, wasn’t death absolute and life unpredictable? I had asked him whether he believed that death was a passageway to another world. And he replied that perhaps life itself was the passageway.

To feel the momentary light of wisdom, and to live in its glow every day are two entirely different things. No matter how much you try, there are some things you can’t internalize.

I entered the tent, praying that the Lord would show me a way. It was quiet but not empty. They had gathered with the same intent—Virata, Drupada, Chekitana, Nakula, Shikhandi, Sahadeva, Dhristadyumna and Bhima.

Arjuna walked into the tent followed by Krishna. I could see from his face that he had already heard.

No one said anything.

I went to him, my eyes shining with tears. I pressed him against my chest and felt his frame tremble against mine.

I held him close. As I hadn’t since we were boys.

Bhima walked me to my tent long after the camp torches had stopped burning. We were silent till we reached my tent. He spoke, his voice heavy with sadness.

‘It’s my fault. I promised the child I would come. I...I tried...’

‘It’s not your fault, Bhima. If anyone is to blame, it is me. I sent a boy with ten days on the field to fight warriors with several years behind them.’

He sniffed, ‘They still weren’t able to kill him cleanly, the bastards.’

I nodded. He looked at me listlessly, wiped his moustache with the back of his hand and walked away, a lumbering ghoul, into the darkness.

A thought breached the dullness in my head. And the clarity I received with it shamed me, even as it gave me pride. In a way, Abhimanyu’s death was symbolic. The Chakravyuha was an elaborate metaphor for human life. Its layers represented our fears and insecurities. The chariot represented us. And the centre represented what we wanted to become. We had to move the chariot through every layer, destroying our fears one by one till we reached the centre.

It was important to enter the Chakravyuha, and reach its centre, and then exit it as gracefully as possible.

I lay on my bed and the day defeated me for the last time.

A
fter the boy fell, we butchered the men with him and formed our layers once again with whatever troops we had left. Jayadratha had been magnificent. Not one Pandava soldier had gotten in after the initial rout. He managed to keep them out even after Abhimanyu had been killed, right up to the very end, when the Pandavas turned and marched away shamefaced.

I believe our soldiers didn’t let him set his feet on the ground that entire night.

The camp was a carnival in the evening. Sura was flowing freely. Spits of meat roasted outside in large, happy fireplaces. And double rations were given to all, again. Song and dance were allowed for a brief while, till the lights went out. After two days of suffering defeat in the battlefield, the soldiers finally had something to celebrate. I had gone back straight to my tent for a bath, hoping to avoid any celebrating soldiers. My heart was not in it.

So. I would never be king...not in this birth, at least.

If I wasn’t killed on the battlefield, I would, at best, be Suyodhana’s second-in-command as he made his own legacy for the Kurus. No robes of royalty. No throne. No gem-encrusted crown. No noblemen hanging around for my commands. I was casually calculating my losses when I heard some commotion outside my tent. A few soldiers had wandered outside the area of leisure. A voice silenced them, as much as it was humanly possible to silence a horde of drunken soldiers, and a head stuck into my quarters.

‘Beg your pardon, Lord. The soldiers are humbly requesting the pleasure of an audience with yourself.’

It was Shatrujeet. The man was drunk or trying hard to get there.

I stepped out to see countless red, happy faces around me, beaming with pleasure. I took a step back and collided into someone standing between me and my tent opening. Before I could say anything, they had lifted me on their shoulder. Shatrujeet was shouting, spraying everyone generously with his spit.

‘Lord Radheya. It was all his idea...his formation...the Chak... Chaka. Chakavyuha!’

The soldiers roared, and I didn’t bother telling him it wasn’t my formation.

‘Lord Radheya! Long Live Lord Radheya!’ I could hear them scream even after they had set me down after a whole round of the camp.

Before he left, Shatrujeet took me to the side and whispered gleefully, ‘Three gold chests, sire. For your head.’

I walked to the council tent and saw that the celebratory mood had spilled over here as well. Drona was smiling as he spoke to his son. He saw me and walked up to me and gave me a hug. All thoughts of Abhimanyu were behind us now, though I suspected they would haunt us later. Sushasana was telling everyone, ‘Surmashana, my son, he killed Abhimanyu. He killed him.’

Jayadratha was the prime attraction of the tent. Everyone wanted to know how he had kept back all the Pandavas, and more importantly, where had he been the past twelve days? The smile was stiff, as were his movements, but I could tell he was enjoying the attention.

Only two people in the tent were not sharing in the revelry. One of them was Yuyutsu. He sat in a corner, brooding, and glared at me as I walked past.

‘You’ve doomed us, Radheya. All of us. You and Guruji. How could you all be so stupid?’

I left him even as he spewed more hatred at my back. Some of the other kings looked sympathetically at me. I had heard the allies were openly calling him a traitor now, after his outburst on the field.

He was right. We had gone down a road that would end with the death of all the soldiers parked on at least one side of the field. There would be no turning back. I had doomed us all. And yet, my conscience felt clearer then it had for the past three days.

The other man in the tent who wasn’t sharing in the joy was forced to speak to everyone. When they heard about Laxman’s death, the allies took it upon themselves to offer their condolences. He listened to them all, even though it must have taken all his strength to stop himself from storming out of the room.

I spoke to him when they finally left him alone.

‘Suyodhana, get some rest. Tomorrow will be another long day.’

He nodded, expressionless.

I continued, not sure of what I was saying, ‘Laxman fought better than all of us today.’

I would like to think that the thought comforted him even if my words didn’t. He stared at the floor and said softly, ‘I’ll kill them all, I promise. They won’t live to see Indraprastha. None of the brothers will ever be king.’

I just nodded and put my arm around him.

The old warrior lay in the tent.

He heard the sound of shuffling and his tent opened briefly. This time, he didn’t even make an effort to see who had come. What use was it now? Death would, in fact, be a mercy, given the pain he was in.

‘It’s me, Grandsire.’

Radheya.

‘So you’ve come back…without a crown on your head, without your brothers, without anything. Just the way we met last time.’

Radheya stood silent looking at the ground.

‘How did it feel, putra? Did you feel safe in the shade of six warriors? I heard it took a seventh to land the final blow. Was it because you were too scared to do it yourself?’

The effort made him cough. Radheya picked up the jug of water lying on the table beside the bed and poured him a tumbler.

‘Easy, Grandsire.’

‘Even if you go to them on your knees and beg forgiveness, they won’t accept you. Who...whose idea was it to kill the boy in such an idiotic way?’

‘It was Drona.’

‘I should have never made him Guru. He should have remained a training instructor to the end of his days. But you, Radheya, you had an entire kingdom at stake.’

‘I’m not sorry for killing him.’

His bluntness silenced Bhishma.

‘As to why I did it, Suyodhana trusts me. He trusted me with a kingdom when I was a charioteer. He trusted me with protecting the Kuru empire when he didn’t know I was a Kuru. And he trusted me with the life of his son. I betrayed him once today by letting Laxman die. I don’t think I’ll be able to do it again.’

‘If you became king, you could have saved his life.’

‘There is still time for that.’