The Rise of Hastinapur (13 page)

She got to her feet, and looking up at the sky she murmured: ‘I am coming to you, Mother.’

TWELVE

AMBA SPEAKS

I
remember that night as if it were yesterday. People who claim to hear the gods are either mad or are lying, but on that night when I sat by the Yamuna and looked up into the dark blue sky, I felt the Goddess’s smile warm on my arms, and she seemed to whisper to me that I must go to her. Perhaps I was at the edge of my own reason. Still, as I sat caressing the forehead of the fawn, I was aware of no other sound but the Yamuna’s soft gurgling, of no other smell but that of the wet grass beneath my feet, of no other touch but that of the Mother’s caress.

I waited till the Sage’s return to tell him of my decision, and though he warned me again that the path of a priestess was a long and arduous one, he blessed me and said that I should set up my hut a mile or so northward, closer to the riverbank where the green-apple trees stood. Although he said that I was not yet ready to live on my own, I left him the very day he returned, accompanied by two of his younger sages who would help me raise my hut. I did not tend to the sage’s bruises and wounds; I was too eager to go where the Goddess promised to lead me. I would look back at the oversight later as evidence that I had not yet learnt to step out of myself, and I would offer my nursing care to the sage, but by then all his wounds would have turned to scars.

In the beginning of that first year, when I went to the lake to fill up my earthen pot, every now and then, my glance would steal to my reflection, and I would set my hair in order, or lift the edge of my garment to better cover my bare shoulder. When I came upon blooming jasmines, my hand would pluck them seemingly on its own and place them in my hair, and on some evenings I would sit by the doorstep tying them together with a thread into a garland. I would apply sandal paste mixed with turmeric to my arms and hands, and I would rub them together, marvelling at how soft they became.

On the first full moon day after I moved to my own hut, I invited the sages at the hermitage for a meal – though I still took the raw grains from them – and all evening I spent restless in my mind, eager to hear from the sages how tasty everything was. I dressed up well for this occasion, I remember, and it was only at the end of the meal, when I caught my reflection on an upturned brass plate, that I wondered why the Goddess had not spoken to me after that night by the Yamuna. After everyone had left and I lay alone on my mat with my arm resting over my forehead to shade my eyes from the moon’s rays, just as sleep was about to take me, it hit me like a bolt. I suddenly knew the reason for the Goddess’s silence.

Beginning the day after, I cast away my hair pin and the container of sandal paste and turmeric. Whenever I went to the river or drew water from Parashurama’s well, I made certain that I did not look at myself. I kept away all brass plates and began to use only earthen vessels. The less I saw of myself, I found, the less I thought of myself. The only things that remind us of ourselves are these objects, things that reflect our physical appearance, I thought, and only after about three moons of such abstinence, I saw Parashurama’s scars for the first time.

‘I beg your pardon, High Sage, for not nursing you when you returned from the battle you fought for my sake,’ I told him, but he just smiled and brushed his beard with his fingers. That night, after I had said my prayers and rolled open my mat, I saw in my courtyard the fawn of that fateful blue night, prancing in joy.

At the beginning of the second year, Sage Parashurama brought for me a grey cloak made of a hard, coarse fabric that burnt the back of my hand when I felt it. I was to wear the hood over me for twelve hours of every day, and for those twelve hours I was to tie around my eyes a black cloth so that I do not see. Only when you stop seeing do you truly open your eyes to life around you, said the High Sage that night, and over the course of the year I would see what he meant. In the autumn of that year I reared a calf after her mother had died in childbirth, and during that winter my fawn broke his hind leg while trying to jump over a stream in pursuit of a butterfly. I brought water from the brook and froze it with the white salt-like powder that the High Sage gave me, and I tied the ice wrapped in a piece of cotton around the fawn’s leg. In that spring I also sprained my hip when the calf butted me one morning when I was about to leave to the hermitage to fill my vessel with water. But she hurt her nose too in the process, and I applied some turmeric on her bruise and allowed her to sleep next to me until the wound healed.

Sometime during this year, news came to me that Ambika and Ambalika had both given birth to sons. It did not raise so much as a flutter in my heart.

The first day of the third year began with heavy storms. The river overflowed and immersed the roots of the green-apple trees, and the well from which we drew water swelled so much that we could just lean over and reach the water. At nights I heard the boom of thunder and old, heavy trees crashing to the ground. On one such night Sage Parashurama came to my hut, his hair dripping with water, and I asked him the question that had been plaguing me for a long time.

‘Am I a priestess yet, my lord?’ I asked. ‘Am I ready now to vanquish Bhishma?’

The High Sage said, ‘If you have to still ask that question, my dear, then you are not ready.’

He gifted me a cow to rear that autumn, and his sages built for her a shed in my yard, under the big guava tree. My calf took to the cow’s teat enthusiastically, and the cow did not resist. She gave me milk every day too, and now on my return from the well after filling my vessels, I would bring for her a bale of dry hay from Sage Parashurama’s yard.

I would hear news of Bhishma and of Hastinapur, and as the year progressed I found that my fist had ceased closing at the mention of his name. By the time the first rain clouds of the new year had begun to gather, I found that I could think about him without my heartbeat quickening, and I even thought that if he were to come to my hermitage in need of a vessel of milk, I may – just may – find it within my heart to invite him in and sit by his side while he drank, to fan away the mosquitoes and bugs.

My fourth year began on a sunny note, for Bhishma had begun to recede from my thoughts, even as Hastinapur’s news became less and less frequent now that everything was well. I went to the hermitage on the first day of the year and brought back with me seeds for tomatoes, potatoes, spinach and corn. I had no knowledge of farming and rearing crops, but I thought it should not be that difficult compared to caring for animals, and with my calf now on the way to becoming a full-sized cow, and my fawn outgrowing his need for my attention, I had begun to notice that time hung heavy on my hands. I thought that if Parashurama could have a vegetable garden, so could I.

Although it was not as simple as that, by the end of that winter, I had a patch of land behind my hut on which I grew most of the things that I needed to eat. But for rice, which I still got from the hermitage – and which the hermitage still got from the kingdom of Kunti – everything else the Goddess gave me through her land.

It is one of the great wonders how time seems to shrink when one is busy. Plants, I found, were harder to look after than animals. For one, plants could not swat away flies and mosquitoes on their own, so one had to guard them, protect them, nurture them. I built a fence around my farm, much like the one Parashurama had, and every morning, a zebra and a clutch of monkeys would come and sit atop it, calling out to me to come feed them.

All year, I woke up each day before dawn broke, and I went to sleep only long after the sun had set, with aching muscles and heavy eyes. It was probably the least mindful I had been of time in my life before or since, and it was also the soundest that I had slept.

In my fifth year, I cast off my rings, my jewelled coronet, my sleeping mat, my silk clothes that I had taken when I left Hastinapur, my arm bands, and the few gold discs that I had bundled up in my sack. I do not know why I did this; but I can say that I knew I needed to do it, and once I had done it, I felt happier, and I could feel the Goddess draw me closer to her in embrace. During that year I gave away most of the milk my cows produced to the hermitage, and my vegetable farm had grown to a size where it could quite easily feed three grown men. Sage Parashurama often sent young men from the hermitage to my hut for foodgrains and for manure, and though they smelled like heaven and carried the knowledge of the world in their eyes, I found to my surprise that I was not once tempted to draw one of them to my side. I was not beyond bodily desires yet, I knew, for I still bled between my thighs every month, but there was not the ache I once had for the touch of a man.