O for Obsession

Obsession brings together love and lust, betrayal and hurt, grief, life and longing. It strips the human spirit of all pretense, exposing shame and sorrow, desire and desperation.

What happens when someone loves you to the point of insanity? What happens when someone’s love becomes such an obsession, that it clouds all rational thinking? This is a tale of obsessive love of a father for his son, which led him to shun all reason and hand hold him to the path of destruction.

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“Maharaj, the fight between Bheem and Duryodhana has claimed its final victim. Your eldest son is no more,” said Sanjaya.

“Nooooo……” screamed Dridhrashtra, falling to the ground, shrunken like a corpse, head buried between his knees, and hands capping his ears, as if shutting himself off the news would make it unhappen.

“Maharaj….control yourself,” pacified Sanjaya.

“How can a father who has lost a hundred sons, be calm?” cried Dhridrashtra, “What did I do wrong, Sanjaya?”

Many things Maharaj, Sanjay wanted to say, but how could he say to a bereaved father?

“Was it wrong to want the throne of Hastinapur? Wasn’t I the eldest son? It was my birthright. Was I not strong? Was I not knowledgeable?” Dhridhrashtra’s hands clutched the sword slung across his waist, digging into them, as if he was ready for battle right then. Blood had begun to ooze out of his palm and he let the cold liquid trickle out.

Yes Maharaj, but Hastinapur could not have a blind king. But Sanjaya said nothing. He quietly took the king’s hand and tied a cloth to it, ebbing the flow of blood.

“Pandu was never the king, he could rule only till my son was old enough to be king. My Duryodhana was right. The Pandu sons deserved nothing. So how could they refuse him? My Duryodhana was capable.” screamed Dridhrashtra, wrenching his hands from Sanjaya and banging them on the ground.

No Maharaj, YOU were the caretaker king after your brother’s death. And you could rule till Yudhistir was old enough. Why did you refuse him?  He helped the king collect himself and seated him on his chair.

“They blamed Duryodhana for Draupadi’s vastraharan, but what could he have done? She provoked him, didn’t she? She called him the son of a blind man.  She deserved it. My Duryodhana was right.” There was a sarcastic smile on his lips, more sinister than Sanjaya had ever seen, as if he was reliving the events of that fateful day.

No Maharaj, that was sinful. How could you support your son and keep quiet when your daughter-in-law was being humiliated? But again, he dared not say anything. The king was grieving, and he should be allowed to spit out the venom from his heart.

“Yudishtir and his brothers had been identified during Agyatvas, hadn’t they? So why didn’t they go back into exile? My Duryodhana was cheated.” Dhridhrashtra shook his head in self pity. If they hadn’t come back, perhaps his Duryodhana would have lived.

The agyatvas was over Maharaj. Duryodhana tried to cheat them. But the exile itself was wrong. You should have stopped Duryodhana from sentencing them to exile.

 “Duryodhana was right. He was always right. His plans were perfect. He had wisely chosen Krishna’s vast narayani sena, how could he die? It must be that cunning Krishna and that cowardly Bheem, who must have schemed to kill my son. My Duryodhana was invincible.”

He was seething with rage, and all his hatred was beginning to rise into every muscle in his body. If the Pandavas had been here, he would have gladly crushed them into pulp merely by holding them in an embrace. He got up from his chair and walked across the room like one inebriated and possessed, pushing away everything in his path, banging into walls and pillars, chairs and vases, roaring like a wounded lion, crying like a child, screaming like warrior, and all the while Sanjaya helplessly tried to calm down the king.

Who could change destiny?

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Dhridrashtra was born blind, but what his eyes could not see, his mind understood, his ears heard and his heart followed. Why then had he been so been blind to the atrocities of his son? Tied up in the obsessive love of his son, he had rejected all wisdom and had encouraged Duryodhana’s plans. The war had been suicidal right from the start; why was the knowledgeable king unable to see that?

This day....last year....O for Organise

N for Noxious

Can love be noxious? Can it be so poisonous that it consumes the one you are supposed to have protected? Can your love for someone be a mere pretense?

This is a tale of hatred and revenge, rather, a love so noxious that like a termite, it kept gnawing at the object of his hatred from within, till it led to his complete destruction.

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The gates of the prison had opened.

Finally.

Sister Gandhaari had managed to convince her son to let him free. As Shakuni limped out the prison gate, he took a deep breath and inhaled the stench. This stench he must not forget. It was the stench of death. The death of his brothers and his dear father. Their death… that was responsible for his life. A life… that would now be committed to revenge.

The pain in his legs was excruciating. Silent tears flowed out them and Shakuni remembered how his father had dealt that severe blow and broken his leg. Even the memory of it was traumatic. Each step was torturous.

“Let this affliction keep reminding you of the suffering of your brothers and father,” his father had said. How could he forget?

As he took another step, a scream of pain rose to his throat but died down before it could escape his lips. He could not let his nephew see the agony on his face.

His nephew stood smiling at him. Was he mocking him? Was he mocking the way he limped? Laugh away my dear nephew, laugh away.

“How are you, Mamasri?” asked Duryodhana.

Very well, my dear nephew. Life in prison is great. And especially, when you have seen your brothers and father die before your very eyes. 

But he just smiled back.

Gandhaari hugged her brother and wept. “I am sorry Bhratasri, I am so sorry,” she kept repeating. “I should never have told Duryodhana that father married me off to a goat and slaughtered it before marrying me off to Arya,” she said amidst sobs. “I did not know he would do this to you.”

Blood rushed to Shakuni’s eyes with such enormous force that they turned purple. A sinister smile was beginning to form on his lips, his jaws tensed, and his whole face assumed demonic proportions. His grip around his sister’s body was beginning to tighten and if she could see his face, she would have collapsed from fear if not from suffocation.

“Mamasri…” his nephew’s voice broke the spell, and Shakuni released his grip and let the moment slip.

“Yes, my dear nephew,” he said in his inimitable style, smiling as he turned to face him.

“Lunch is served, come let’s eat.”

“Ah! Lunch…yes, let’s eat.”

A bowl of rice…that had fed him through the months in prison, while his brothers and father starved to their deaths. The food, that they sacrificed for him, so that he may live. The food that had given him strength to hold on in the hope that one day he would avenge all that.

Did Duryodhana’s hands not tremble when he sent a mere bowl of rice for his 100 uncles and an old grandfather? Did he really think they could survive on that?

His father Subala’s hopes were pinned on him. He would never let his father down. His sacrifice would not be wasted.

“Pass this thread through the tiny hole in this bone”, his father had said, “Whoever can do that, will be my chosen one… the one to avenge our plight.”

Where all his brothers had failed, Shakuni had won. That had been easy, hadn’t it? He had tied a grain of rice to the thread and fed it to an ant. Then he had guided the ant through the hole in the bone! And he had won his father’s trust and the bowl of rice.

He looked at the plate of food before him, and then he looked at Duryodhana’s plate. 

Mentally, he injected the most venomous poison into it and imagined Duryodhana choking and withering away.

No, he could not die so easy. He deserved to die a slow, painful death. A sugar coated poison that would kill him slowly.

Be ready Duryodhana, he said to himself, your countdown to destruction has begun!

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This day...last year...N for Nonchalance

M for Maternal love

Maternal love- The word that sums all bliss! How can the theme of love be complete without a mention of maternal love? Can there be a love purer than the love a mother has for her child? The love of a mother is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no boundaries.

Here’s a tale we have all listened to a hundred times before, and yet it never fails to fill our hearts with infinite love for Him. He, who is our master, and yet to her, he was only a child- a child she loved the most in the world. A tale of how her emotions see-saw between love and anger, then between anger and guilt, and again between guilt and love! 

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“Mausi, why are you behind my son. If he says he did not steal, believe him,” says Yashoda, even as Kanhaiya peeks from behind his mother and sticks out his tongue at Jamuna Mausi.

 “Oh my God, look how he lies! Yashoda, I saw him stealing curd with my own eyes. My pot of curd is sitting right here,” says Jamuna, pulling Kanhaiya out from his hiding place and tapping his little tummy, “and on his face too. Look!”

Yashoda looks at Kanhaiya’s face and sure enough there’s a thick white moustache formed around his tiny mouth.

“Kanhaiya, why do you steal?” she asks, tears beginning to form at the rim of her eyes. Why couldn't he be truthful to her at least, had he been truthful, she might even have let him off. At least she wouldn't have to be humiliated by this wretched woman!

“Maiyya, I did not steal,” says little Kanhaiya, batting his eyelids and wiping her tears with his little hands.

The innocence in his deep black eyes and the softness in his voice begins to melt her heart. She looks away, lest she forget that she is supposed to be firm with him.

“Teach him a lesson, Yashoda, or your son will keep breaking into our houses for butter and curd.”

Feeling humiliated and in anger, she picks him up and carries him to the backyard. He continues to smile at her, his eyes sparkling with mischief. She fetches a rope and sets him down next to a heavy wooden pestle. Then she ties him firmly to the pestle by his waist.

“Let me see how you steal butter and curd again,” she says. But all the while, she avoids looking at her Kanhaiya in the eye. Kanhaiya observes how she is fighting hard to control the tears that threaten to roll out of her eyes. She bites her lips and turns her back to him, lest she is unable to leave him tied up thus.

With a heavy heart, Yashoda, goes back to the house and tries to concentrate on her work.

A little while later, Balarama comes running into the house.

“Mother, come soon,” he says, “Look at Kaanha.”

Her heart skips a beat. What could have happened to her dear Kanhaiya? Did she tie the rope too tight? Did he faint standing in the sun? How silly of her to have listened to old Jamuma Mausi. Why didn’t she believe her Kanhaiya? Didn’t he say, he did not steal the curd? What a wicked mother she was!

A thousand thoughts in her head, she rushes to the backyard. But Kanhaiya is nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Kanhaiya?” she asks Balrama, her heart filled with fear.

“Come with me,” says Balarama leading her to the meadows.

Then she spots the huge pestle wedged between two trees that have been uprooted. Where was Kanhaiya?

“Oh, Kanhaiya…” she cries, “I have killed you, what a wretched mother I am,” she says, thinking her child has been crushed in between the trees and the pestle. The color drains from her face and she is about to faint. 

Just then, she spots him! 

There is her little child, playing with the cowherds. As she sees him, color returns to her cheeks and then, suddenly, she is shocked.

How did he come here? Didn’t she tie him up?

“Maiyya, Kaanha is eating mud,” says Balarama.

Yashoda closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. What a naughty child he is, she thinks. This time I will not spare him. I will not look into those eyes, she promises herself as she walks up to him.

“Kanhaiya, did you eat mud?”  

“No Maiyya, I did not eat mud, Dau is lying,” pleads Kanhaiya.

“Yes Kanhaiya, everyone except you is lying. Now, open your mouth”, she orders and then pressing his cheeks with her thumb and forefinger, she forces open his tightly clamped mouth.

“Open, Kanhaiya, open.” But the tiny mouth is tightly shut and she is suddenly scared she will hurt her little one.

As she loosens her grip, Kanhaiya smiles mischievously and then opens his mouth. 

As Yashoda peers inside, she sees not mud, but the entire cosmos. She sees the sun, the moon, the stars, the galaxies, the earth and the other planets, she sees the plants and all the living creatures that walk on the earth, she sees the past, the present and the future. And then everything turns into a big ball of fire.

She is terrified and faints, and when she wakes, her little one is in her arms, smothering her with his kisses, stroking her cheeks gently with his tiny plump hands, his cherubic face staring down at her.  

Not sure of what happened, she gathers him in her arms, laughing and crying at the same time, and hugging him ever so tight like she’d never let him go.

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This day...last year....M for Miracles

L for Lust

Lust is the thorn on the flower of love. Lust is to the other passions, what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to desire, avarice, cruelty, and revenge, and brings in its wake destruction, either of the one who lusts or the object of his desire.

This is a tale from the Mahabharata, of the time during the 13 year wrongful exile of the Pandavas, and during the last year of their Agyatvasa, when they lived disguised as servants in the kingdom of Virata. A tale of Draupadi, who in her disguise as Sairaindri, unwittingly fell prey to Keechaka’s lust.

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Keechaka looked at the maiden plucking flowers from the palace garden. She looked like a dream. Her eyes danced, as they flitted like a butterfly, from one flower to another. The veil over her head fluttered as the wind tried to tug it off her head. She laughed as she draped it around her head again, and the sound of her laughter gave him goose bumps. He looked at her lips, slightly parted, luscious and inviting. He could almost taste the nectar in her lips, and he was possessed with the thought of locking his own into them.

As the wind flirted with her veil, he saw her bare shoulders. He sighed.

How he longed to bite into her flesh and leave his mark on her pristine skin!

His gaze lingered on her body, moving to her bosom and then to her slender waist, and as he undressed her with his eyes, he felt the burning desire in his loins, like he had felt every day since he had laid his eyes on her. He couldn’t bear to look at her anymore.  The heat consumed him and he thought the fire would engulf him right then. He needed to own her tonight, or risk being burnt to cinders. He looked away, and walked to the royal bath, drowning himself in a pool of cold water.

“Sudeshna,” he thundered, entering his sister’s chamber that evening. “Who is that new maid of yours?”

“Sairaindri?”

“Send her to my chamber tonight.”

“Brother, stay away from her, she is guarded by five Gandharva husbands,” cautioned the queen of Virata.

“Do as I say,” he commanded.

No one had dared disobey Keechaka, for, the power he wielded in the kingdom was frightening.

“Sairaindri,” she called Draupadi, after supper was over, “Keechaka, my brother has asked for some wine. Go over to his chamber and supply him some wine.”

“Maharani Sudeshna, I don’t think it is appropriate for me to do so,” said Draupadi, quite aware of Keechaka’s roving eye.

But no amount of pleading helped. Bowing in to the queen's command, Sairaindri covered her head with a veil and carrying the tray of wine walked to Keechaka’s chamber.

Seeing Sairaindri in his chamber, Keechaka tried hard to conceal his palpable excitement, “Come my love,” he said, pulling her towards him, “Come and please your master. I will weigh you in gold. A beautiful nymph like you does not deserve to be a mere maid.” 

 As he forced his lips onto hers, she screamed and struggled to break free. He dragged her by her hair and pulled her veil off her head in one swift action. Using all her strength, she pushed him away and ran, with Keechaka pursuing her hotly. Finally, he lost her as she escaped and hid in her room.

“Paanchali,” said Bheem, as he entered the room and saw her shivering in a corner, her eyes red and swollen with incessant crying, her lips bleeding, her hair a mess, and clothes in disarray. “Who dared to do this to you?” he thundered.

Draupadi clung to him like a child to her mother, crying copiously, narrating the lustful attack by Keechaka.

And despite the request by Yudhistir, despite knowing that their Agyatvas if broken, could sentence them to further thirteen years of exile, Bheem’s anger erupted like a volcano waiting to spew its molten magma. And the lava did spill, taking the lustful Keechaka in its wake, reducing him into an unrecognizable pulp.

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This day....last year...L for Letting go

K for Kidnap

Kidnap? How can that be a manifestation of love? Did I digress from my theme? Well no, in the tale that I talk of today, the protagonist kidnaps his lady love and at her insistence! So there, when in love, there is no right or wrong!

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Swathed in golden light, as if the last rays of sun fell in yearning just on him, draped in an electric yellow flowing Pitamabara robe, the Srivatsa twirled on his bare chest, and a peacock feather adorning his crown, he sat majestically on his jeweled aasana. His face, the colour of a full blown blue lotus, his magnificent eyes the shape of a delicate lotus bud, wearing white lotus earrings, and a pink lotus garland that touched his knees, the king of Dwarka smiled. His aura was mesmerizing and as Krishna smiled, the flowers bloomed, and the koels sang their sweetest song.

“Kaanha, why the smile?” asked Balarama, Krishna’s elder brother.

“Dau, Rukhmini has sent me a message,” he said, handing over the scroll to his brother.

“My beloved Shrikaantha, my brother Rukhmi, is about to marry me off to Shisupala. So come and take me away, for, if I cannot marry you, I will kill myself in this birth and for a hundred more, until you are mine.”  

The incarnation of Goddess Lakshmi, Rukhmini was waiting to be married to her beloved Vishnu in this birth too. Her brother Rukhmi, however had other plans.

“Dau, I had approached Rukhmi asking for his sister’s hand in marriage, but he has promised her to Shisupala.”

Balarama smiled. “Go Kaanha, go and bring Dwarka’s rightful queen. You have my blessings.”

“Dau, kidnapping and eloping thus would be termed as a rakshasa vivaha,” worried Krishna.

“No Kaanha, not if the girl herself wishes to elope and has herself requested to be kidnapped,” assured Balarama.

The streets of Vidharbha had been decorated for the wedding. The whole kingdom had been decorated with lights and flowers, and the palace itself had been abuzz with festivities, befitting the wedding of a princess.

Within the palace, in her royal chamber, Rukhmini glowed with happiness. She knew her Krishna, her Madana Mohana, would be here to take her away. She readied herself for her wedding, not with Shisupala but her Lord, who she knew would not disappoint her. She anointed her body with rare sandalwood oils, and wore precious jewels around her delicate neck. The rubies and emeralds glowed on her fingers, set in exquisite golden rings. She draped herself in her finest silks and looked every inch the bride, befitting the Lord of Dwaraka.

Her long eyelashes curled around her almond shaped, kohl lined eyes trying to conceal her excitement, even as her lotus pink lips quivered in anticipation of her Blue God.

It was time for the Gouri Puja before the wedding, and her maids walked with her, showering fragrant flowers at her feet. She bowed before the idol of Maa Gouri at the temple and sought the Devi’s blessings, offering rice, bangles, kumkum and turmeric, praying to be united with her beloved. The people who were gathered there stood bewitched by her beauty. “She is only fit for Krishna” they whispered amongst themselves.

She stepped out of the temple, her heart pounding wildly, eyes looking out for the one who had stolen her heart. Suddenly, a golden chariot appeared out of nowhere. 

Her Krishna had arrived! 

She smiled at him and as Krishna pulled her inside, the chariot disappearing as quickly as it had appeared, leaving behind a thunder of horses’ hooves and a kingdom full of spellbound people. Krishna had managed to whisk away his lady love from right under the noses of her brother and the prospective groom!

It took a kidnap and an elopement to unite Lord Vishnu and his consort, Goddess Lakshmi in their birth as Krishna and Rukhmini.

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 Glossary-

Srivatsa- an auspicious symbol meaning beloved of Sri or Lakshmi

Shrikaantha- One of the many names of Lord Krishna, meaning Husband of Goddess Lakshmi.

Madana Mohana- God of love who mesmerizes everyone

Rakshasa vivaha- demonic wedding

This day...last year...K for Karma