The Kaunteyas

by Madhavi S. Mahadevan

Men’s stories are the bones of a bygone age, sanctified as relics, preserved in stone. Women’s stories are written in water. Passed in silence from mother to daughter. About things perishable: flesh, blood, feelings, tears. Suffering. Endurance is a sign of womanliness. But what men overlook is that endurance is a crucible, it changes the existing state.

Love between a man and a woman seems a mystery, intimate yet subtle, its nebulous shape a rush in the blood, an imprint on the soul; its essence to be divined in songs, stories, secret yearnings and dreams, but never to be evaluated, examined or weighed in words. It is unknowable, until the moment one is struck by it. And then it is as if the world is lit up from within.

Love depletes you. It restores you. Love is regeneration. It gives rise to a new receptivity. Love transforms. It is the lone spark that drives away the darkness in the depths of our hearts. It is all we need, but it can also reduce us to nothing. Love is the dancing flame that burns the lamp’s soft wick to blackness. Love can, on occasions, bring pleasure, but it always, always brings pain.

Happiness is a composite emotion, a distillation of bliss, delight, joy, ecstasy and ease. Misery, on the other hand, is unsubtle. Opaque as the unseeing eye, hard of hearing, thick-headed with its own anguish. Like an abyss, it offers nothing but darkness. Yet the acknowledgement of a condition more miserable than one’s own can be an eye-opener.

Fate and Time are relentless, but they do not work alone. They work with human nature: the choice one makes and the chance one takes.

Together they wrought the changes in our lives, thrust us forward on life’s journey. Does that mean that everything that happens to us happens for a reason? One’s desire may be the cause, but who devises the conclusion? Are we, despite our individual responsibility, powerless in the shaping of our own fortunes?

The story that one creates for oneself is different from the story others tell about us, but neither of them is true, neither false. The

Fate and duty. Was one’s entire life meant only to be crushed between these two?

‘We should, but oftentimes fate allows us no choice,’ I said with some bitterness. ‘Our vision is limited, and our actions that seemed right at the time turn out—differently. Despite all our efforts, there is a certain inexorableness that is set in motion without our knowledge…Destiny never reveals how it works till its work is done.

‘Krishna says that you must train your mind to let go of whatever it is that you fear to lose,’ she said.

Has time erased nothing? Is it all buried alive as a snarled knot—lust, injustice, cruelty, bitterness, rancour? Has it all been growing and spreading for generations, waiting for the right moment to strike? Is this how old wrongs are set right?