The Kaunteyas

by Madhavi S. Mahadevan

The best stories have always been men’s stories, and what men regard as the best stories are often war stories.

Yes, women’s tales, too, have been told by men, but with an important difference: they are cautionary. They warn men that women are clever, conniving, deceitful and, frequently, the cause of dissension. They tell women how they should be and, more importantly, not be. A common theme is retribution for breaking rules that are invariably manmade. Speaking out of turn, laughing at the wrong time, keeping a secret. Crossing the line.

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.

Fortitude. A woman’s strength is measured by her capacity to bear suffering, but is it a sign of courage? They are not one and same, are they? It would be many years before I learned the difference. It would be another woman, much younger than I, who would teach me that.

‘Humans have a knack for choosing precisely those things that are the worst for them,’ he said drily. ‘Before choosing, be aware that it is bound to produce not just a result but a reaction.’

His son was destined for greatness, but my life was doomed to ignominy. Unless I do something to prevent it. I have to protect myself. There is no one who will do that for me.

Are you going to be all your life what other people want you to be?’ The scorn in his tone made me flinch. ‘What other way is there?’ ‘You could be yourself.’ ‘What do you mean be yourself?’ I cried. ‘I am a kshatriya princess. My reputation matters to me! A good name sustains us in life and it is all we can hope to leave behind when we die.’

‘Women in our society generally do not have the freedom to choose their husband,’ she said. ‘Some would say that you are lucky, but I believe that it is going to be a difficult test for you. Choose with your heart, but also listen to your head. Remember one thing: no matter what you choose, at some point it will become a burden.’

Marriage, for a woman, begins with a journey. She leaves her father’s house to spend the rest of her life among unfamiliar people. Which place does she call home—the one she is expected to give up or the one she is required to embrace and serve? What part of herself does she discard? What does she take forward?

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.

He is a man. He will break my heart one day. Only a man can do that.

I had been of no consequence, but that meant I had also enjoyed a certain freedom. The ruling family of Hastinapur imposed an iron discipline on its women: again and again, I was reminded that to be a queen, I must be seen as one.

He eyed me angrily. ‘Do you even know what it feels to be born in a palace like this one? It’s suffocating. You are a puppet dancing to many strings. Who pulls them—fate, family, society—it does not matter. You are doomed to dance till it kills you!’

It also meant that every human had his or her own proper place in the hierarchy—a way of behaving, a manner of speaking—and was expected to keep to it. No one spoke out of turn, neither did anyone speak their mind. We were all puppets, but who or what was manipulating us? Was destiny just a glorified name for tradition that had turned repressive?

Is choosing to be blind so that you are not better off than your handicapped husband a sign of virtue, or just plain show-off?

‘Tears are nothing but your will turned to water…and when that happens the battle is as good as lost.’

‘That was my mistake: I asked for too much. Birth is the defining circumstance of our life, even though all women’s lives are the same.’

‘No kshatriya will love a woman so much that he will risk being disgraced,’ I said wryly. ‘Duty and honour are the two limbs that make a kshatriya able-bodied—in his own eyes.’

In her eyes was the clear message to me: while fertile wombs were absolutely essential to the Kurus, hearts as fragile as mine were dispensable.

This is not my home. These are not my people. Even if I live my whole life in their midst, I will remain an outsider.

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.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ I observed idly. ‘The gods withhold the rains or send us a deluge, but it is the ruler who gets blamed for both.’

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.

When there are no more kingdoms left to crush, what will he have to do to prove his virility to the world? Will he throw me out? And her too? It is always a woman’s failure, if she cannot conceive.

‘The law!’ she echoed hollowly. ‘When the stakes are high, laws have been changed before.’

‘Words are a mask we make to hide the truth,’

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.

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?

What sort of an archer are you who shoots without thinking? What manner of king are you who does not recognize that his foremost duty is to protect the weakest of creatures?’

as a protector, a king cannot be unarmed, but violence was not the same as cruelty.

Silence was a solvent that, in the end, left one with nothing to think about, not even secrets.

Truth is, so often, not a simple thing. A lie is so much simpler. Maybe that is why husbands tell lies and wives refrain from speaking the truth.

woman is not considered immoral for doing whatever her husband asks of her—if she does it out of love for him.’ ‘Love has nothing to do with what you want from me. You care nothing for my feelings, only for the fruit of my womb—that is all you are interested in.’

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

‘Is brahmacharya what you intended for us?’ he asked pointedly. His candour unnerved me. ‘Don’t we have everything that we want right here?’ ‘Everything we need, perhaps, but not everything we want. We will never have everything we want. Here, there or anywhere.’

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

The journey that I had begun as a day-old babe, cast out of her mother’s arms and her father’s heart, had made of me a lifelong exile, looking not for a home so much as for refuge. Every journey that I had made had only taken me deeper into this strange banishment.

He shifted his gaze. ‘We didn’t want to worry you.’ ‘Why don’t you just say that you didn’t want to get involved in somebody else’s problem? Is this how we repay their hospitality?’

‘Don’t justify it by calling it a covenant. When it comes to tackling tyranny, all the rules in the shastras fly out of the window, do you hear me?’ I turned on Yudhisthira. ‘As for you, Yudhisthira, cramming high wisdom in your head has left no space for common sense. Didn’t your father din it into you that a kshatriya’s first duty is to protect the weak? Why else does he always bear arms? Who can be more helpless than an entire family that decides to end its very existence rather than let any one of their number go?

Be careful what you wish for—you just might get it.

‘Does it have to do with competing for one man’s attention all your life? Is that why the patrani seems so fed up all the time?’ ‘It has to do with marriage itself,’ I said. ‘Marriage does tend to dispel women’s illusions about men.’ ‘And vice versa?’ ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘But men have the freedom to create other alternatives for themselves.’

Men are men, but the world, in my experience, requires us women to be something different from what we really are. Be the first to rise and the last to go to bed. Never eat until everyone else has been fed. Don’t stare anyone in the eye. Never ever speak your mind.

‘If we know that something terrible lies in wait, shouldn’t we do our best to avoid it?’ ‘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.’

‘One must try to do the right thing, but also for the right reason—only, it’s never that simple.’

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

Why did my heart lift like a bird rising into the blue skies? He touched my feet and called me Bua. One word, but it was everything to me. Blessing him, I had kissed his forehead and rested my own briefly on his manly shoulder. A serenity entered my heart, a fulfilment that spilled over in foolish tears. Was it due to the affection and respect I read in his look or was it the deep, lifelong yearning in me to belong somewhere, to someone? To call someone my own?

Or was it that, being men, they thought that a woman’s bitterness was inconsequential, tedious and best disregarded? Being men they didn’t realize that there is a certain zest to anger, a kind of clarity which eludes one otherwise.

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?

‘I am sick of this talk of fate and destiny,’ I burst out. ‘These are empty words behind which we hide our ineptitude and our lack of will. By tamely accepting our fate we prove nothing but our fearfulness.’

‘Dharma!’ I spat the word out. ‘What is it but a weapon to bludgeon us into submission?’ ‘Kunti—’ ‘No. You’ve had your say, Didi. Now please allow to me speak. I, too, have tried to follow my dharma, but what’s the good of it? All it ever does is offer a flimsy absolution against guilt. We are responsible for our condition, that alone is the truth.’