Pregnant King Read online

  ‘May I go to the temple first?’ an impatient Drupada had requested.

  ‘That is not possible,’ Pruthalashva had said. ‘It is new moon. Only women will be allowed to enter the shrine tonight.’

  ‘I need but a glimpse,’ Drupada had pleaded.

  ‘Even if you enter the temple tonight, you would not see Ileshwara. You will see Ileshwari.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Drupada had asked.

  Pruthalashva had then revealed the secret rites of Ileshwara of which the kings of Vallabhi had been guardians for generations.

  ‘On new moon nights the deity in the temple is an enchantress displaying fourteen symbols of womanhood. Red sari, unbound hair, bangles, nose-rings, pots, parrots, sugarcane. As the moon starts to wax, each symbol of womanhood is replaced by a symbol of manhood, one each day. On the first day, the unbound hair is replaced by a curled moustache. The next day the red sari gives way to a white dhoti. Then the pot is removed and the bow put in its place. Gradually, the parrot becomes the peacock, the sugarcane becomes the spear, turmeric becomes ash, so that on the full moon, when only men enter the temple, the deity is an ascetic displaying fourteen symbols of manhood. Ileshwara makes men fathers. Ileshwari makes women mothers.’

  Drupada had agreed to wait in the palace while his wife visited the shrine.

  Pruthalashva’s queen had draped Soudamini in a red sari and had unbound her hair. After taking a dip in the temple pond, she had entered the shrine dripping wet with a garland of jabakusuma flowers in her hands. Inside the temple, Soudamini had seen the beautiful face of Ileshwari. Her face was covered with turmeric. Her earrings were shaped like dolphins. She had a diamond on her nose-ring, emeralds on her ear-rings and rubies on her toe-rings. She was adorned with armlets, bracelets and anklets. Chains of gold coins round her neck made her resplendent. In her hand, she held a pot of water and a sugarcane rich in sap. Her large unblinking silver eyes gave Soudamini assurance, love, and the promise of motherhood.

  When she emerged from the temple, Pruthalashva’s queen had asked her, ‘Why is your husband so impatient for a child? Does he not have six sons already?’

  ‘They are all dead,’ she had sobbed. ‘Killed.’

  ‘By the Kurus?’

  ‘No. By their own father. They fought beside my husband when the Kuru princes challenged him to battle. But they were no match for Drona’s students. My husband said they were useless. Disappointments. They could not stop the division of their father’s property. So he slit their throats like a farmer who destroys diseased crops. Their mothers were discarded. I am the new field, his youngest queen, still a virgin. I am supposed to give him a better crop, children of worth, who will kill his enemies and restore his pride.’

  Meanwhile, across the city square, Drupada sat alone in a courtyard within the palace. As he waited for his wife to return, the memory of Drona’s words had resurfaced to sting him like lashes of a whip. ‘We were once the best of friends, Drupada. Inseparable. You promised me then that you would share all your wealth with me should I ever need it. I came to you for just one cow because I realized I was so poor that my son could not distinguish milk from rice water. Instead of helping me, you humiliated me. Said that friendship exists only between equals. That I was a beggar and hence could claim only alms not friendship. I swore that day that I would be your equal. And now, thanks to my students, I am. We are masters of two halves of the same kingdom. Once I could not give my son a bowl of milk. Today, I gift him a kingdom full of cows. Remember, Drupada, henceforth your rule extends only south of the Ganga. To the north is the kingdom of my son, Ashwatthama.’

  Drupada had gritted his teeth and had fixed his mind on Ileshwara. ‘Some say you are Shiva, the destroyer. Help me destroy the Kurus.’

  ‘He would rather destroy your rage.’ Drupada had turned around and had found a bull talking to him. On the bull sat a man with matted hair smeared with ash holding a trident in his hand. A serpent slithered round his neck. The bull’s feet did not touch the ground and the man’s face radiated an ethereal glow.

  ‘Are you Shiva?’ Drupada had asked.

  The man on the bull had ignored his question. His eyes were shut. He swayed as if lost in a narcotic dream. The bull had then spoken up once again. ‘Shiva is the silent one. This is Shankara, the one who speaks, not as distant as Shiva. Each is different. Though still the same.’

  Shankara had then spoken, his voice cold as the snow-capped northern mountains, ‘You have called me and I have come. What do you want?’

  ‘A son,’ Drupada had said, ‘one who will kill Drona and his patron, Bhisma. And a daughter, who will divide the house of the Kurus.’

  How can that be, the bull had wondered. Drona was a Brahmana. Did Drupada want a Brahmana-killer as a son? Wasn’t killing a Brahmana the greatest of misdeeds for it broke the connection between man and God? And Bhisma? All the gods knew that no man could possibly kill Bhisma. Before the bull could say anything, Shankara had said, ‘So be it.’

  Realizing that his master had not clarified whether he would give Drupada one son or two, or a daughter, or both son and daughter, in two bodies or in one, the bull had warned Drupada, ‘Beware of what Shankara has given you. He is Nilakantha with poison trapped in his throat. He is Bhairava, lord of terror. The smoke of hemp fills his lungs. What he speaks is often muddled, difficult even for the wisest Rishi to comprehend. He could have destroyed your rage. Given you peace. But you have asked him to create children for destruction. He will do that. But not as you imagine it. There will be confusion. Blurring of boundaries. Twisting of emotions. Division of land and flesh. Splitting of desires and destinies. Yama will laugh. Kama will weep. Blood will flow. Blood of fathers and brothers and sons and friends, so much blood that the kings of the earth will, in disgust and fatigue, beg for peace. Peace that could have come much earlier, before the destruction and the bloodshed, if you had only asked Shiva to destroy your rage.’

  That night, charged by the vision of Shiva on his mighty bull, Drupada had made fierce love to his wife as soon as she had returned from the temple. That very night she had become pregnant.

  Drupada had returned to his half of Panchala singing songs praising Ileshwara. Ten moons later, Panchala had awoken to the sound of a child. A girl.

  With trepidation, the midwives had presented the child to Drupada. He had looked at her, had smiled tenderly and had then declared proudly, ‘This is the son that Shiva promised me, the son who will kill Drona and Bhisma. I name him, Shikhandi, the peacock.’

  The midwives had looked at each other and the queen not knowing how to react. With a stony face, Soudamini had looked at her newborn daughter and said, ‘Yes, indeed, it is a son.’ She realized that rage had made her husband mad.

  Fearing the mad king, the midwife had covered the child’s genitals and had announced to the world, ‘Panchala’s king has fathered a son.’

  The Brahmanas, the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas and the Shudras of Panchala also saw what the midwife had seen. But they all had agreed, ‘Yes, yes, it is a son, a prince, an heir. Killer of all our king’s enemies.’

  Everyone cheered.

  Amidst the celebrations, the bards sang, ‘Glory to Ileshwara of Vallabhi, who is at once god and goddess, who gave Drupada the child he wanted, one capable of killing the man, who Yama says no man can kill.’

  crisis in vallabhi

  Fourteen years later, around the time Drupada felt Shikhandi was old enough to be given a wife, disaster struck Vallabhi. The stars revealed a great calamity that would soon befall the Turuvasu clan. King Pruthalashva’s only son, Prasenajit, was to die at the age of eighteen, two years after his marriage, two months before the birth of his son. And to the dismay of Vallabhi, the king refused to take responsibility for the situation.

  ‘I have been fettered long enough,’ Pruthalashva told his guru, Mandavya. ‘First by varna-dharma that forced me to be follow my father’s footsteps, be king and rule Vallabhi. Then by ashrama-dharma, that compelled me