The Palace of Illusions (54 page)

From the time Pariksit was in swaddling clothes, my husbands spent hours planning his education. They were determined to mold him into the perfect king, the one in whose hands they could leave Hastinapur without worry, the one who would redeem their sins with his goodness. As soon as he could stand, Bheem began to teach him the first moves of wrestling; Arjun had an infant-sized bow designed for him; Nakul sat him on his favorite horse and walked him around the courtyard; Sahadev taught him how to speak to animals; and Yudhisthir told him stories about the lives of saints. For his naming ceremony, they invited all the important sages and gave away more wealth than they could afford. They begged Vyasa to officiate at the ceremony and then pestered him to tell the child's future until he admitted to them that Pariksit would be a powerful and virtuous king.

But before he left, Vyasa drew me aside. “Watch the boy's temper,” he said. “It'll get him in trouble if he isn't careful.”

My mouth went dry. “What do you mean?”

Vyasa shrugged. “Just what I said: the boy's temper might be his downfall.”

A pounding began inside my head. Here was history, repeating itself once again. But this time I wouldn't let Vyasa's riddles ruin Pariksit's life. I grabbed his arm, though I knew it was most inappropriate for a woman to touch a sage. “Speak clearly for once.”

Looking at my face Vyasa must have seen I wasn't going to let go until he satisfied me. “Very well,” he said. “There will come a day, a sweltering summer day not too many years after you are gone, when Pariksit—still a young man—will go on a hunt. Separated from his men, he'll get lost in the forest. He'll be hungrier and thirstier than he'd ever been in his life. That's when he will stumble into Sage Samik's ashram and see the sage sitting at the entrance to his hut. He'll ask for water. But the sage will be too deep in meditation to hear him. Thinking the sage was slighting him, Pariksit will be furious. He'll find a dead snake nearby and throw it around the sage's neck and depart.

“The sage will still know nothing of this. But his son, returning to the ashram in the evening, will be enraged at this insult to his father. Being hot-tempered himself, he'll take holy water in his hand and use up the power of a lifetime of penance to pronounce a curse.
May the man who did this to my father die in seven days of a snakebite.
Waking from his trance, Samik will be filled with consternation. But the curse will be too strong to recall. He'll do the only thing possible: send a warning to the king of his impending doom.”

“You can't stop now!” I cried when my heart had slowed enough for me to speak. “What happens next?”

Vyasa shrugged. “Here the path forks, as it often does with destinies. Pariksit could be overcome by vengeance. He could destroy the sage's hermitage and all in it, and then drown himself in revelry
until he died. Or he could realize the wrongness of his conduct, ask forgiveness, set his affairs in order, and spend his last days in holy company. It'll depend on how you bring him up! In any case, you'd better arrange an early marriage for him if you want the Pandava lineage to continue.”

I could tell, by his tone, that though he wasn't unsympathetic, he didn't consider the matter particularly calamitous. To him it was like watching a game to see what the outcome might be. Perhaps that's how it feels when you've predicted the deaths of millions. His indifference made me livid.

Vyasa deftly rescued his arm from my slackened grip. “Ah yes, one more thing: keep this knowledge to yourself.”

“Why?” I cried. “And why didn't you tell my husbands? They, too, need to know of this terrible doom that is lying in wait for our family so they can take precautions.”

“I only tell people what they can stand. Knowing Pariksit's fate now, just when he's recovering from his long dejection, would break Yudhisthir. And his brothers wouldn't be able to bear that. But you—I've always known you to be stronger than your husbands.”

Before I could recover from my surprise at that statement, he was gone.

I wanted to ask Krishna's advice, but he seldom visited us nowadays. Perhaps he needed to take care of his long-neglected kingdom. Perhaps he wanted us not to depend on him overmuch. Perhaps he felt he'd completed what he needed to do for us. So I followed my own uneven counsel, watching Pariksit carefully, disciplining him whenever he showed signs of anger. In this I was alone. Kunti and Gandhari doted on him, and even Subhadra, who had been much stricter with her own son, could not refuse him anything. How could
I blame them? There would be no other child in the palace in their lifetime. And as for Uttara, he was the only reason she'd held on to life when Abhimanyu died.

I urged my husbands, at least, to be firm with Pariksit, but they only accused me of excessive harshness—unbecoming, they said, in a grandmother. They showered Pariksit with every luxury they could imagine. Scores of attendants hovered around him. He was always in a royal lap. I doubted that he even knew the meaning of the word
hunger
—or
thirst.

When I pointed out that a more disciplined upbringing—like their own—would prepare Pariksit better for kinghood, they smiled indulgently. Yudhisthir said, “Let him enjoy his childhood, Panchaali. I don't remember a single day when my mother didn't remind us that we had to make our dead father proud.”

The others nodded.

Sahadev said, “Every moment of our life, we knew our goal.”

Nakul said, “Everything we learned, every conversation we had—it was for that purpose alone: to help Yudhisthir reclaim our father's kingdom.”

Bheem added, “I could never eat a meal without thinking, This food must make me strong enough to wrest the kingdom away from Duryodhan when the time comes.”

Arjun said, “I never had a night of unbroken sleep. I'd get up in the dark while everyone else was resting to practice archery— because otherwise we might not win.”

“Do you want Pariksit to grow up like that?” Yudhisthir asked.

Gagged by Vyasa's injunction, what could I say?

So much indulgence would have ruined another child. But Pariksit was an introspective boy, soft-spoken, with dreamy eyes.
Though his uncles crowded his life with lavish entertainments, he preferred simplicity and quiet. To my surprise, in spite of my strictness he was fond of me and often sought me out. But perhaps it is vanity on my part to think so! He had the gift—like his granduncle Krishna—of giving his undivided and courteous attention to whomever he was with, making them feel he loved them especially. In any case, I enjoyed his conversations, which were filled with wisdom beyond his years. A chord of subtle sympathy resonated between us. Except for Dhri during my childhood, I had never found anyone who so instinctively understood how I felt—and accepted it. Sometimes a powerful urge would rise in me to confide in this boy things I'd never been able to tell anyone—yes, even my feelings for Karna. But always I bit my tongue to stop myself. I had no right to burden a child with my murky confessions. His future would be hard enough!

Pariksit had one intriguing habit: if he came across someone new, he would approach him and gaze intently in his eyes. Once I asked him why.

“I'm trying to find someone,” he said shyly. “I don't know who he is. He was the most beautiful person I've ever seen—except he wasn't really a
person.
He was tiny, about as big as your thumb. His skin was a beautiful, shiny blue. He stood between me and a huge burst of fire and smiled—and the fire faded. Maybe it was just a dream.”

I stared at him in wonder, this child who'd been brushed by the elusive Mystery I'd been trying to grasp all my life. The tiny being he described was very like the Cosmic One mentioned in the scriptures. Could it be Krishna that he'd seen in this guise, the infinitesimal counterpart of the vision that had overwhelmed Arjun at Kurukshetra?

Subhadra had told us, over and over, that Krishna had saved
Pariksit's life when Aswatthama's astra came to destroy him. She was convinced it was because he was divine. I believed the first part, but the skeptic in me was unable to accept the second. Having special powers didn't necessarily make one into a god. And yet a part of me longed to believe, for the sake of the serenity it might bring my storm-swept heart.

I waited impatiently to see what Pariksit would do when Krishna came to visit us next. I trusted his intelligence, his child's clarity of vision. If he recognized Krishna as his savior, my doubts would be put to rest. But when Pariksit saw Krishna, he treated him just like his other granduncles, except he was more reserved with him because he hadn't seen him in so long. He bowed and recited a formal welcome, but soon he got over his bashfulness and sat close, examining with delight the many intricate gifts Krishna had brought him from Dwarka and describing in detail the antics of his pet monkey.

Did I say Pariksit delighted all our hearts? Not so.

As time passed, the blind king grew more reclusive. He seldom left his chambers, where he paced restlessly, counting his prayer beads, though they did not seem to do him any good. On other days he sat in front of the windows that looked out toward Kurukshetra, remaining there long after the sun set and the maids brought in the lamps that he could not see. Each time we visited him, he appeared to have shrunk further. He sighed often, drawn-out wisps of recrimination. Though he was polite to my husbands, he couldn't forgive them for being alive when his sons were crumbled ash. I felt his resentment for them emanating, a black oily smoke, from each pore of his body. He must have resented Pariksit as well, for through him Pandu's lineage would continue to flower while his had withered already. Pandu, whom he'd always envied for getting what should rightfully have
been his: the kingdom, the prettier wives, popularity and acclaim. Even his death had been exciting, meteoric, not the aching blankness that drew a little closer to Dhritarashtra each day. Pariksit must have sensed this, for though he was fond enough of Gandhari, he refused to accompany us to Dhritarashtra's rooms. When forced, he stood behind us, stubbornly mute, and escaped as soon as he was able.

Only Yudhisthir, that perpetual innocent, was surprised and dismayed when Dhritarashtra announced he'd had enough of palace living. It was too painful. There were too many memories. (Did he send one of his accusing sighs toward my husbands as he spoke?) Death was almost upon him, and he wished to prepare for it by moving to a forest hermitage. Yudhisthir begged him to reconsider; he remained righteously adamant. But perhaps I'm biased. Perhaps he'd truly set his heart on the next world.

Certainly it was so with Gandhari. When she announced that she would accompany him, under her blindfold, her thin, ascetic's face blazed with conviction. I was sorry to be losing her. She had traveled past grief to wisdom. Observing her gave me the hope that one day I, too, might complete that journey. When I was stricken by the memory of my dear dead ones, I would go to her rooms and sit by her. She would place her hand on me, and somehow I would be calmed.

But what shocked us most on the day of departure was to find Kunti standing beside Gandhari, holding her by the arm so she could guide her. She bade us goodbye, and no amount of pleading could change her mind.