Pregnant King Read online

  Bending down Pruthalashva looked at his grandson and said, ‘Hurry up. Grow up. Get yourself a wife and give me a great grandson. I don’t have much time. The forest calls me.’

  Pruthalashva waited. And waited. And waited. He heard of the swayamvara at Udra and the excitement in Vallabhi when Yuvanashva entered the city through the new gate with his new bride on his elephant. He heard of the grand marriage and the feast that lasted for twenty-seven days. He heard everything except what he wanted to hear. After five years, he grew tired. He went to Mandavya one day and said, ‘Yuvanashva’s seed stubbornly refuses to sprout.’

  ‘Maybe the field is barren.’

  ‘Surely Shilavati realizes this. Why has she not yet got him a second wife? Does she not realize that she is fettering me?’ Mandavya did not reply. ‘Anyway, I reject this fetter. Great grandson or no great grandson, I wish to go.’

  ‘Please wait. See the face of Yuvanashva’s son and then go.’

  ‘Bondage takes many forms. I will not be enchanted anymore.’

  All the young students and the old teachers of Mandavya’s ashram sat under a great banyan tree and watched the old king set out on his last journey. At the edge of the hermitage, Pruthalashva undid his clothes. Then he picked up a lump of earth, threw it back over his shoulders, and then walked ahead without looking back. He seemed relieved to find freedom at last.

  ‘Maybe he will meet the Pandavas in the forest,’ said Vipula to this father. That was a possibility. After gambling away their kingdom, the five brothers and their common wife spent all their time following the trail of hermits, moving from hermitage to hermitage, meeting Rishis, talking to them, trying to make sense of their miserable lives.

  ‘I don’t think he will care,’ said Mandavya.

  selfish crows

  Mandavya informed Shilavati of her father-in-law’s departure. ‘Pruthalashva entered the third phase of his life without waiting for his grandson to be born. Now he has entered the final phase of his life without even waiting for his great grandson to be conceived. This is not good. The fabric of dharma in Vallabhi is unravelling itself.’

  ‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ said Shilavati. ‘The rains come on time and leave on time. The dharma of Vallabhi is intact.’

  Mandavya remembered what Vipula had said when Pruthalashva walked away into the forest, ‘Here is a man in hurry to give up his throne that was always his and there is a woman clinging to the throne that was never hers.’ He had admonished his son for speaking of the queen that way. Looking at Shilavati’s nonchalance in this matter, he wondered…

  ‘Five years have passed. The princess of Udra has not even suffered a miscarriage. Perhaps the soil is barren; you must consider another field for the royal seed,’ said Mandavya rather forcefully.

  ‘Five years is not a long time. Let us be patient,’ said Shilavati chewing her betel nut and gesturing to her maids to wave the peacock fan more rapidly.

  But the crows were not patient. Five years was a very long time. A loss of over sixty opportunities to be reborn. They cawed and cawed. They flapped their wings and glared impatiently in Shilavati’s dreams.

  ‘The wife may be barren but the mother is not,’ said one crow to another. ‘Two fields separated by a generation. What does it matter where we spring from? Maybe Shilavati should consider offering herself to a suitable man, maybe Mandavya. She still bleeds and he is not that old. Through her at least one of us can be reborn. Her husband may be dead but the field still belongs to his ancestors.’

  Shilavati fell sick the next day. How could the ancestors even think like that? But they did. And they spoke their mind without guilt or shame. The dead have no feelings. No conscience. Just the intense desire to take birth once again. Rebirth. Life. Senses. Feelings.

  Mandavya was acutely aware of Shilavati as a woman. Her breasts were full and hips wide. She could have borne Prasenajit many sons. If only he had not died so young.

  Only once had Mandavya felt desire for the young widow queen. It had happened eight months after Yuvanashva’s birth. The priests felt the royal infant should be placed on the throne to reassure the people of Vallabhi and to tell the Devas that the throne was not empty. But the child howled every time he was taken from his mother’s arms. So the priests decided it was best the mother of the king sat on the throne and the king sat on her lap through the ceremony. She was told to hold the bow for her son. The silver parasol was raised behind her. The yak-tail fly whisks were waved by the most beautiful maids. Instead of the red bindi of brides on her forehead Shilavati had a vertical tilak made of sandal-paste stretching from the tip of her nose right up to her brow. It was the only indicator that she had no husband. She looked so regal, so powerful, so dignified. Everyone looked at her. She belonged on the throne. The young sixteen-year-old bride chosen by the Angirasa. No one noticed the child until he started to cry and demanded the attention of the court. ‘If only she was a man,’ said the Kshatirya council.

  ‘Thank the gods that she isn’t,’ Mandavya heard himself say. Those who overheard him were alarmed. An embarrassed Mandavya realized Kama was shooting an arrow into his heart. He caught the arrow mid-air and broke it. ‘She is like my daughter-in-law; I will not submit to the vulgar arrows of Kama,’ he told himself.

  Mandavya had a wife. A large dark lovable woman named Punyakshi, youngest daughter of a Vaishya elder, given away to Mandavya along with a cow and a bull, a way of marriage in keeping with the way of the Rishi.

  Punyakshi knew she was a ritual tool for her husband, like his water pot and fire sticks and reed mat, a tool to explore the secrets of the cosmos and share it with the kings of Vallabhi. She accepted her fate without question. She loved the hermitage outside Vallabhi. She sat with her husband when he performed the yagna and when he looked up at the sky to decipher the meaning of the stars. She took care of his students like a mother and offered herself to him in her fertile period. He came dispassionately, whispering, ‘This is a yagna. Nothing more. Your thighs are the altar. Your passion the fire. My seed the oblation to my ancestors.’ After the offering of seed, he would walk away without once caressing her.

  On the night of the day Mandavya saw the young Shilavati on the throne he hugged his wife passionately. He bit into her neck and let his tongue explore her ear. He buried his face in her hair, in her breasts, between her thighs. She felt his fingers spread apart the altar. She felt herself devoured by the flames of his passion. This time, after the offering of seed, he lay with her, holding her. Punyakshi felt his tears. What secret was he hiding, she wondered. ‘Let me be the vessel that will hold your venom. Let me be the churn who will purify your soul,’ she whispered in his ears.

  They never spoke of that night again.

  Shilavati sent for Mandavya when she recovered from her illness. ‘My spies tell me that the people of Vallabhi are saying that the king of Vallabhi has been denied the grace of Ileshwara because he is king in name only.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mandavya.

  ‘Do you think it is true?’

  ‘I ask myself if it is your son’s destiny or your desire which comes in the way of Ileshwara’s grace.’

  Shilavati looked straight at Mandavya, ‘Tell me, if I were a man, when would I be expected to retire?’

  ‘After your son has a son.’

  ‘And does my son have a son?’ she asked. Mandavya smiled, realizing the queen was twisting ancient laws to hold on to the throne. He remembered what the Angirasa had said about Shilavati: a girl who had never been taught the dharma-shastras but whose understanding of dharma would put all the kings of Ilavrita to shame. ‘So let us be patient,’ said Shilavati softly.

  ‘Perhaps the prince is sterile, unfit to be king,’ said Mandavya.

  ‘How dare you say such a thing about my son?’ Shilavati’s eyes flashed fire. Then it was her turn to smile. She had underestimated the Acharya. He had trapped her. The only way to prove her son’s virility was to get him another wife. One always blames the cow first. ‘Tongue