Pregnant King Read online

  ‘More god, less goddess,’ replied Mandhata.

  Yuvanashva smiled. ‘A king cannot confuse his subjects. Tell me this or that. Nothing in between.’

  Mandhata’s mind raced back to his journey from the hermitage through the streets to the palace. The markets were full of pearly white dhatura flowers. ‘A god,’ he replied.

  ‘Is that the truth?’

  Mandhata shut his eyes, thought for a moment and then replied with absolute clarity, ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Today, the moon has started to wane. The moustache of Shiva has been removed by the Pujaris and replaced by the unbound hair of Shakti. Do you still consider Ileshwara to be a god?’ repeated Yuvanashva.

  Mandhata was silent for some moments. Then he said, ‘It is not what I consider that matters, father. This is the truth of the temple, expressed in rituals, told to us through flowers in the markets. Today there are dhatura flowers in the market and so a god resides in the temple. So it has been since the days of Ila.’

  ‘Why do you value the temple’s truth over your own feelings?’

  ‘How else will there be order father? Everybody perceives the world differently. We have to agree somewhere. The world is full of ambiguities and confounding, even contradicting, details. Vishnu created kings to organize, identify and evaluate things, so that there is clarity in life. In every society therefore, social truths matter over personal truths.’

  ‘What if Ileshwara wanted to be treated as a goddess today?’ asked Yuvanashva.

  ‘Only you, the king of Vallabhi, supreme custodian of the temple’s rites, can change the rules,’ replied Mandhata.

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘If a good king wants to be great, he must be fair to all: those here, those there and all those in between.’

  Yuvanashva laughed. There was hope. Mandhata understood the amorphous nature of the world and the limitations of language and the law. He was proud of his son. He truly had all the hallmarks of becoming a Chakra-varti.

  Mandahta remembered the long discussions he had with his teacher on the confining nature of words, how they fail to capture all emotions. Vipula had said, ‘That is why words are not enough. We need grammar to string words into sentences, put everything in context. Sometimes even sentences fail to capture what we are trying to say. Prose is useless when speaking to the beloved. We need poetry.’

  Jayanta had interjected then, ‘Words don’t matter, only feelings do.’

  ‘And how do we communicate feelings without words?’ Mandhata had asked.

  In response, Jayanta had smiled and touched his brother, his eyes full of tenderness. Vipula watched Jayanta take his brother by the hand into the garden, and show him blue butterflies hovering over yellow flowers. Beauty of the world. Love between brothers. The affection of a teacher. All experienced without anything being spoken.

  But surely the king had not called him to the mahasabha to discuss the conundrums of language or the identity of Ileshwara? ‘Why have you really called me here, father?’ Mandhata asked, unable to contain his curiosity any further. ‘Is it to solve riddles or has it something to do with the princess of Panchala?’ Mandhata knew his father was not pleased by his decision not to go.

  He is just like mother, thought Yuvanashva, impatient, wants to come straight to the point. ‘I could order you to go,’ he said looking straight into his son’s eyes.

  Lowering his head in deference, Mandhata said, ‘If you order, father, I would obey. Do you want me to go?’

  ‘Only if you want to be her Gandharva.’

  ‘She is not fit to be queen of Vallabhi.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Her reputation is tainted. Her father was not quite a man.’

  ‘Forget reputation for a moment. What about her? Is she fit to be a wife?’ asked Yuvanashva.

  ‘I have heard she does not shy away from the truth of her father. That makes her strong. She will make a good wife. But will one such as her be allowed to sit beside me when I perform a yagna, as my mother sits beside you when you perform yagna?’

  ‘If a chief queen is barren, the second queen must sit beside the king.’ Another sentence that had slipped out without prior thought; Yuvanashva was convinced that Yama, or Kama, or Prajapati himself, was controlling his tongue.

  ‘Yes, I know the rules, father. But my mother is not barren. I am her son,’ replied Mandhata, smiling, suddenly uncomfortable.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Yuvanashva.

  Mandhata did not like this question. ‘She told me so. Everybody knows that the chief queen, Simantini, is my mother,’ he said, suddenly feeling unsure of what he had said. Mandhata remembered the lullabies his mother sang him. How they comforted him. Then he remembered the lullabies he had overheard his father sing, at night, as he walked in the corridor outside the queen’s courtyard. These were always sweeter. That deep unexplored yearning from the well of childhood dreams sprang up again. A strange feeling rose in the pit of his stomach. What was the real reason his father had called him here, he wondered. Where were the riddles?

  Yuvanashva’s heart ached for his son. He saw the confusion in his eyes. The racing thoughts. He knows, Yuvanashva deciphered. Somehow he knows.

  Yuvanashva changed the topic, ‘Your teacher says you are brilliant. Your understanding of dharma matches your grandmother’s.’ Mandhata beamed at the compliment. ‘But I will agree with Vipula only if you answer three of my riddles.’

  ‘I will try my best, father.’

  Yuvanashva asked the first question. ‘A magician once beheaded a newly-wed couple. He then put the man’s head on the woman’s body. And the woman’s head on a man’s body. Who is the husband now? Who is the wife?’

  ‘The one with a man’s body is the husband. The one with a woman’s body is the wife.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘The husband creates life outside his body. The wife creates life inside hers. In time, the woman’s head will accept the man’s body and think like a man. And the man’s head will accept the woman’s body and think like a woman. But at no time will the man’s body behave like a woman or the woman’s body behave like a man.’

  ‘Very good logic,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘Very good indeed. Now, here is a second one. Two boys. Both orphans. The best of friends. A god’s curse makes one of them a woman. Now the two of them want to marry. Live as husband and wife. But the ancestors of the boy who became a girl object. Who will raft us across the Vaitarni, they ask. How must a king treat the boy who now has a girl’s body, as a man to the satisfaction of his ancestors or as a woman to the satisfaction of his friend?’

  ‘As a man. To treat him as a woman is to submit to desire. Desire is the greatest threat to dharma. It changes over time and can never be trusted. What does not change over time and what can always be trusted is duty. Our duty, what we are supposed to do, how we are supposed to behave, is fixed at the time of birth. For birth reveals our biology and our lineage, the two cornerstones of dharma.’

  ‘So, by your definition, Shikhandi is a woman even though later in life he acquired a man’s body.’

  ‘Yes, I do. If, like the Pandavas, we accepted the truth of the moment, rather than the truth of birth, then nothing will be predictable in society. A man today may have been a woman yesterday. And a woman today may become a man tomorrow. Husbands will never know if there is a wife waiting for him when he returns home. Children will never be sure if yesterday’s father is father even today. The Pandavas may have won the war at Kuru-kshetra by treating Shikhandi as a man. But all the kings of Ila-vrita reject their version of dharma. They believe Bhisma was right. Shikhandi was and remains a woman in their eyes. He should not have entered the battlefield. Shikhandi’s daughter embodies an aberration, a disruption of order. She has therefore been rejected by all the kings of Ila-vrita.’

  Yuvanashva raised his eyebrows, ‘Impressive. Just to let you know that your grandmother believes the Pandavas were right.’

  ‘What?’ said