I'm too exhausted to describe it, so I'll just post the summary here:
Saanvi, Krishnaa's well-meaning niece, posts to r/advice, as one does, about her aunt and her boyfriend, believing her aunt is cheating. The internet tries to help. The internet (and Saanvi, and most of her family) do not know about the other four.
You can read it here. I've used a bunch of AO3 work skins, which took me forever to do. I hope y'all enjoy, lol.
I'm in my Dwapara yuga phase after watching Krishnavataram part 1, so yeah.
• Definition of Worldwide Heartthrob™
• Very fluent in Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang
• He told Bhima to use 'yeet' as a battle cry. laughed his ass off when the warrior used it.
• Loves to ragebait Satyabhama with 6-7 memes (she always falls for it)
• He once learnt peacock mating dances to impress Rukmini for their wedding anniversary (Hint: she was NOT impressed)
• Learned how to do hair from Radha and does elaborate styles for subhadra, his wives and daughters.
• If he were an influencer, his page would have pictures of roadside cows, couple reels with Rukmini, elaborate pranks on his siblings and 'GRWM while I teach you how to destroy a car beyond repair (it was Shakuni's) and make it look like an accident'
• somehow knows every Indian language. people have given up on understanding how.
• Once he woke up at the crack of dawn and started making cursed chicken noises on the palace roof to wake everyone up (He ended up with a beating from Satyabhama, a lecture from Balram, and an hour in a timeout corner by Rukmini)
• hates, and I mean, HATES, salted butter.
• Takes his kids on trips regularly.
(It ended up with him covered in seaweed, pradyumna holding a giant squid, charudeshna holding half a boat like a pool floatie, charumathi with half a fish in her hair and bhanu and samba covered in bruises.)
That's it for now! do comment if you have any more!
I am a different anon but Shri Satyabhama's sisters wouldn't be counted among the 16000 princesses right? Does that mean Kanha married women other than 16008 queens? Ig we will never know 😭
Yes, yes he married women other than the rescued princesses and the chief queens. Yes, we'll never know how many he married 🙂↔️
I have tried to find as much as I can apart from the chief queens and junior queens the other wife's of Vaasudeva aren't mentioned much as well the inconsistency is frustrating
It is. But you have to keep an open mind and patience when it comes to perusing texts. Nothing worthy has ever come easy.
Is there any text there mention about the 16000 damsels in detail or their names i can't find much about them i could find the name vratini and padmavati the sisters of satyabhama
I don't think there's anything much detail on them. They're glossed over. We just know Rohini was the chief amongst them. Harivamsha and Bhagavatam are the only ones which even mention them. Maybe seek Google's help, but be very careful about the info you choose to trust.
1.If we were villains or secret history by donna tart
2. Favourite food
3. What could you've been doing if not a writer
4. Warm colours shades or cold
5. Choose any academia apart from dark
6. One advice that you could give to your younger self
7. Tomboy or girl's girl
8. Your all time favorite novel or books
9. Topper or a average student
1. Both. Both are good. Plot wise it's TSH, IWWV wrecked me emotionally.
2. Momos and noodles. Hehe.
3. Reading. I read 4 books recently. I'm hella proud. (I haven't written anything since a month I'm very close to hugging a wall at full speed).
4. I like cool shades better. But also red.
5. Romantic academia :p
6. You are not responsible for anyone's emotions except your own. People with passive aggression are not your problem. You're a kid, you do not get a medal for acting wise beyond your years.
7. Girl's girl. I can't be a tomboy. I'm way too girly for that.
8. I don't have all time favorites, it's like I have a favorite from each genre. Recently I read Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, and I think that's a good lit fic anyone looking for comfy and healing books should try. I also read The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo, me properly stepping into fantasy, and I wasn't let down. What a world building and Santangel, the man you are!
Chat after a convo with @theramblergal I realized that if there's a common name for our man Kanhaai and the prasadam he gives us, it's holy snack. Both holy and snack. Both of them.
Stages of writing a novel: (1) this is a great idea (2) this is a good idea (3) this is an idea (4) what even is this (5) i have made a terrible mistake (6) okay there's something here (7) this is actually good (8) this is too good, something is wrong (9) wait did i accidentally write something real (10) close laptop. do not think about it for three days. open laptop. start over from stage 4.
Chat after a convo with @theramblergal I realized that if there's a common name for our man Kanhaai and the prasadam he gives us, it's holy snack. Both holy and snack. Both of them.
Her feet are barely immersed in the stream, yet enough that she can feel the running of the water against her feet. It shouldn’t feel anything like him.
Yet—yet. It does.
The memory rises unbidden, as it is wont to do.
The tender, almost-ticklish skim of his fingers against her feet. His fingers stained a deep red from applying alta. The curve of his brow when he looked at her.
The world shades darker for a moment. Radha burrows her fingers into the grasses, grounding herself in the physicality of the force her fingers exert, letting the memory ebb and flow through her. Inhales, sharply. Exhales, for as long as her lungs will let her.
Once it is past, she opens her eyes again.
Vishaka is now seated by her, the reed basket she was carrying set beside her on the ground. The contents spill over: sweet-smelling jasmine buds, earrings, armlets and necklaces with shimmering lapis lazuli inset, rings of various precious stones, a freshly plucked red hibiscus.
Vishaka takes her braid and begins to undo it without any words; Radha shifts backward just enough that Vishaka doesn’t have to strain her arms while braiding.
They sit in silence, the sounds of nature the only thing in Radha’s ears.
(She doesn’t have to strain, or imagine, to hear his flute.)
There is some sort of a hesitation underpinning all of Vishaka’s motions, Radha notices after a short while. A longer-than-normal delay when shifting her hair. A sharp, almost inaudible sigh every few minutes.
While Radha debates whether or not to call her out for it, she blurts it out.
“Kanha’s coming soon.”
Radha knows she hears the words, registers it even. But for a moment: the birdsong is louder than anything; the susurrus of the stream overpowers her hearing. Nature is all she can—all she will—hear.
(The curve of his sly smile. The way his peacock feather danced in the wind.)
She has to breathe before she can speak.
Eventually, she says, while Vishaka is steadfastly placing the jasmine buds in her newly-braided hair, “What does Indulekha think of that?”
Vishaka stills for a second. Then continues.
“I think,” her voice is very light and little more than a whisper, “That she will go to him this time.”
Radha thinks back to the last time he had visited Vraja. It had been well over four years ago.
Indulekha had come to her in the forest that time, followed by a few other of her sakhis.
—
Radha heard Indulekha long before she came into view. The sharp clink of her bangles, the echoing step she carried with her well into adulthood; it all announced her arrival.
She came to stand in front of Radha, staring down at her. A few paces behind, Lalita, Tungavidhya and Sudevi all reached the pair, panting slightly, worry lining their faces. But they said nothing.
“Yes, Indu?” Radha asked mildly.
Indulekha made to drop to her feet beside Radha, but clearly thought better of it, and folded her arms.
“Kanha is coming. And unless you come with me, I’m not going to see him.”
Radha looked up at Indulekha. Indulekha looked at her.
“No.”
“No?” Indulekha’s voice was disbelieving.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Radha inhaled softly. “A no is a no, Indu.”
“But why?” Indulekha pressed. “He’s here, Radha. Yes, he’s not here with us forever, but that’s only more reason to cherish what limited time we do have with him.”
Radha pursed her lips, and the leaves rustling was the only sound for a while.
Indulekha stared at her, and as the moments passed and it became more evident that she wouldn’t say anything, she threw an incredulous look at their friends.
Radha caught the motion, and her eyes shifted to the women behind them.
Lalita’s face was carefully neutral; Tungavidhya’s eyes were on the ground; Sudevi was watching them with an expression mixed with sorrow and love and regret.
Indulekha gestured to them. “Do you see what this does to us? Every time he comes? Every time you refuse to, Kishori? We follow you everywhere because we love you. But this costs us. Is our grief nothing to you?”
Radha sucked a breath in.
“It is not nothing.”
“Then why won’t you come?” It was a tired and helpless question.
Radha looked out at the forest. Rabbits ran across the green floor; squirrels scampered up the trees. For a moment, she envied the animals and plants their simplicity of life. What did it mean, to be love incarnate, if it could not be easy? Love was supposed to be easier than breathing.
It really wasn’t.
“You know, he asks after you. Every time he comes, Gaurangi, he looks off into the distance. It’s obvious he’s thinking about you. This—whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it to him too,” Indulekha waved her hand, frustrated and hurt. “Digging your fingers into the wound doesn’t hurt just you—it wounds us too. And him. You’ve made a shrine of your grief, Haripriyaa. Why do you worship at its altar when the object of your affection is actually here?”
Suddenly, everything was too still.
Radha did not breathe.
Something gave way in Indulekha, and she sank to Radha’s feet.
Tears in her voice, she asked again, “Why don’t you go to him?”
—
Radha pulls herself out of the flashback, while Vishaka tenderly slides clinking bangles onto her arm.
Indulekha, despite their argument, stayed true to her word and stayed with Radha the whole time he was in Vraja—she sat in silence and anger and grief, but she stayed, regardless.
Finally, Radha says, “I think I have an answer to Indu’s question.”
Vishaka responds gently, “What is it?”
Radha rearranges her thoughts. Then, speaks: “It is a kindness we do each other.” We. As though it was not just her, it was him too. “The wound has been sewn together, at last. I do not think we have the strength to re-knit it together if it reopens every time we see each other. I have negotiated with my wounds and rearranged my life to accommodate these griefs, and I would rather live with the life I have right now than try to figure out new ways to bear this existence waiting for him.”
A breath later, she finds she has more to say.
“How can I live, knowing he’s just out of my reach? Endlessly waiting to see him? It’s not the hundred years, Vishaka; that, I can endure. I cannot see him once every five years and spend the rest of the time yearning for him. I do not want to live like that. What is a hundred years to once every five years?”
Vishaka’s cool fingers rest on her forearm. Radha is pulled out of her thoughts to see the glimmer of tears in her sakhi’s eyes.
She shifts herself towards Vishaka, places her fingers under Vishaka’s chin, and tenderly tilts it up to meet her gaze.
“He is everywhere,” she says softly. Casts her gaze about the world around them. “In all of it. Every part.”
The latticed light through leaves: the residue of light lingering after him; the gentle whistling of the air: the tinkle of his jewellery; the grasses swaying: his peacock feather dancing in perpetual ecstasy; the solitary dark cloud floating above them: his neela-megha-shyam complexion; the amber ring on her finger: the yellow of his favoured garments.
“And he is nowhere.”
The world is the world. He is not here; he is in Dvaraka, or Indraprastha, or Hastinapura, playing the part of the many-faceted god. Politician, kingmaker, husband, father, friend, but not the child of Vrindavana. Not the makhan-chora, not the gopijana-priya. Water flows downstream, the world devolves into more chaos by the second, he is not here. It is a truth of the world.
“So what does it matter,” she murmurs, drifting into herself, “if he is here? We are more than here. We have always been more than here.”
The stream runs on.
Radha sits by it, feet immersed.
(And he laughs at her for a long moment, then brings the flute to his lips, and begins to play.)
He's not old enough to forgive his father, but he's old enough to understand that his father died because of a broken vow that caused a curse and he's old enough to hold a grudge and be angry.
He's old enough that his brothers ask him to explain what happened, why isn't their father waking up—
He's old enough to realise what Mata Madri chooses as she sits on the pyre that he has to set alight.
He's old enough to resent her and Mata Kunti, too, because for years on end he can only remember the stench of burning flesh when he thinks of his father and Chhoti Maa.
Yuddhishthir is eight when he sets his father's pyre alight. He is eight when he becomes the man of the house. He is eight when his youngest brother, his dear Sahadev starts to obsessively read stars to predict the future, so that they're never caught off guard in regards to pain again. He is eight when Nakul, his baby, who has recently started using live steel swords, learns to perform first aid and swears to learn all about medicines there is, to make sure that he can save them from pain. He's eight when sweet Arjun starts to hold their mother's hand, protectively guiding her away from anything that might give her pain. He's eight, when Bheem, his first brother, starts to train himself relentlessly, so he can beat anything that wishes them pain.
Yuddhishthir is eight, when he learns that breaking vows has dire consequences.
He is eight, when he promises himself to never stray from the path of dharma. He doesn't care about what happens with him in the afterlife. He only cares that his brothers (his babies, his younger brothers, his, his, his—) never have to light his pyre because of his own choices to cross what lines are not meant to be crossed.
He is eight, when he promises himself to walk on the path of righteousness, because while it may be the path full of thorns, at least it would allow him to control his life. Control the grief he gives his family. Keep them smiling, even if they smile as they tease him for being too upright.
Yuddhishthir is eleven when he learns that committing crimes against family is something that his own cousin not only considers, but plans for and executes.
Sahadev's fingers have burnt marks on them. Because Dushasan apparently tripped.
Yuddhishthir knows what his brothers are planning. He knows the need for revenge in their eyes. He knows Bheem's burning anger, knows Arjun's determination and knows worst of all, Nakul's protective streak for Sahadev.
He also knows Dushasan's training schedule. Lets it slip when talking to them about his own schedule. He knows which berries are laxatives. He teaches his brothers a botany lesson while going berry picking.
No one knows what he's led them to do, no one except Sahadev, who sees him turn his gaze away just as he catches Sahadev bumping into Dushasan.
For Yuddhishthir cannot break the laws of dharma. But dharma, in his understanding, means that he must protect the innocent and avenge wrongdoings in a justifiable and reasonable method.
He's done no wrong according to that. He did no avenging. He only started studying with his brothers more.
It's all he can think of as he sees his younger brothers try so hard to befriend their cousins, even after years of trying to ensure that there isn't a rift. Yuddhishthir has spent years, trying to mend bridges that should have never existed, for there should have been no distance.
He loves his brothers so much, he would carve his heart out for them. Is that not okay? Is that not normal? How can anyone dislike Bheem's undying hope in the good of the world? How can anyone disregard Arjun's little anecdotes? How can anyone look at Nakul and not want to cradle his face in their hands? How can anyone not admire Sahadev's knack of finding poetry in every mundane thing?
His brothers are so wonderful, so sweet, so fierce. How can people not see it?
I'm not ready, I'm not ready, I'm not ready.
It's all he thinks as they enter the palace made for them, for the days that they will spend performing the pooja.
He is the one to perfume the rites that his father usually would.
He is not ready.
Uncle Vidur, the only man who ever looks at Yuddhishthir with something akin to sympathy, sends a message of possible destruction and suddenly all Yuddhishthir wants to do is let the fire of the yagna burn high up above his own head, let it consume his rationality with something much more efficient. His lips remain closed for a moment longer, savouring the taste of venom in his mouth as he remembers his mother's ancestry. His mother's mother is a Naga, he thinks as he swallows, pushing down the thought under his ribs. The blood in his veins must be part venom. There must be fangs behind his canines.
He is not ready.
He knows this. He is unequipped to protect his family alone. His father's family seems to have no sense of honour and his mother's family is busy establishing Dwarka. Yuddhishthir has to be the shield and the sword. And heavens above and hells underneath, he's going to make sure his brothers stay alive, if it's the last thing he does.
So, they plan to escape.
Everyone takes turns digging the tunnel. Every night, he lets all of his brothers dig for an hour each. After them all, he comes back and digs for as long as he can. Now that he knows, he can smell lac and wax and every flammable object buried in the architecture of this palace. This trap. He can't keep his brothers and mother here anymore than needed.
He digs until his hands have even more callouses and his fingers start cramping.
Bheem gives him a knowing look the very next day, immediately noticing the twitch in his fingers. He mixes tumeric powder in Yuddhishthir's sandalwood paste.
After they escape, Yuddhishthir takes the first watch and gently presses down herbs on Sahadev's burnt forearm. He pulls Bheem's head onto his lap and caresses Arjun's forehead when it starts to crease with worry lines even in his sleep. He leans down to press his forehead against Nakul's, thankful that the dark stains on his baby brother's fingers are from charcoal drawings and not ashes.
When he leans back up, Mata is awake, but drowsy.
"Why did you let them antagonise him?" She mumbles, blinking sleepily,"Must protect them— they need you— please." She trails off, eyes falling close again.
They've escaped death by fire, he knows, but something burns in his chest. Louder than a volcano and more scorching than the Sun itself.
When they marry Panchali, Mata is the one who proposes the idea of going back to Hastinapur.
Yuddhishthir, for the first time in months, feels the urge to curl his hands into fists and—
But there is no enemy to fight, not here. Here, his wife, his brothers and his mother exist. His family, who are now debating on what to do. Bheem is furious, refusing to even sleep in the direction of Hastinapur. Arjun is conflicted, knowing that they can't abdicate but also burning with fury at their past treatment. Nakul, for all his anger, refuses to back down from their ancestral seat just because of a group of horrible people— he demands justice. Sahadev, who Yuddhishthir knows to be the wisest of them all, is just as conflicted as Arjun. He wants to support their rights— Yuddhishthir's claim to the throne— but he also thinks that going back would lead to more attacks.
(Yuddhishthir never asks what Sahadev sees in the stars and their palm lines. Not because the gods themselves forbid knowledge so enlightening, but because he sees Sahadev's hands spasm and shake, because he sees how Sahadev's eyes well up when someone looks at him expectantly. Yuddhishthir let's him hide his face into Yuddhishthir's neck and whispers everything that he knows to be a fact whenever Sahadev gets like that. "We're all alive," he says. "Pitashree and Mata Madri must have reincarnated by now. You are just a smidge taller than Nakul, even if he doesn't admit it. Bheem still has that flower you gave him. You are Mata's favourite. Arjun thinks your embroidery is much better than his. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.")
Panchali, who doesn't even know the depth of horror that they've faced, looks at them with question, lotus eyes widening. Mata looks at Yuddhishthir pleadingly, begging him to take a decision which will give them either a Kingdom or death.
Yuddhishthir closes his eyes and clenches his jaw.
(He can't, he can't, he can't—)
But he must.
"We shall make a decision soon." He tells them, forcing his voice to be firm. "For now, let us break away for the night and sleep on the idea. A new morning shall bring much clarity."
Later, when he and Panchali go for a walk, she asks him about their history. He tells her, softly, speaking of every bruise and blood spill.
"I don't think we must go back, husband." She tells him. "I understand that Mata wants me to be respected as the eldest daughter in law of the family, but is it really a family if it causes you grief?"
Yuddhishthir chuckles and presses a kiss on her brow. "My heart, what is family if it doesn't cause me grief?"
Panchali thinks it's a quip and smiles, telling him to quit joking at inopportune moments.
Years later, after his hands carry burn marks from punishing himself for gambling everything that he had any right on, Yuddhishthir sobs alone in his room, unable to breathe, unable to allow himself to live after committing such an atrocity. He doesn't even know what had gotten into him.
(I cannot stray from dharma, I will die and they will grieve, they have no father but they will lose a brother that is like a father if I stray from dharma and I die. I cannot die, I cannot leave them to grieve, they will become husks of men that they are. They love me too much, I am undeserving but I cannot force it away, I cannot force them to lose someone else.)
(I should stand up, I should grab a spear from the soldier nearby and run Dushasan through with the tip until his lungs lay on the ground, punctured and broken. I should, I should, I should—
There are too many soldiers with weapons, all of the Kauravas with their weapons. He cannot risk movement, Dushasan is too close and he has a dagger strapped to his waist, he can kill her, what if he kills her—)
Yuddhishthir thinks it would have been better if he'd died after their father, afterall. But no, no, no, then Bheem would have been the eldest and the whole story would have repeated with Bheem tested and tried at every step. Bheem is a good man, a devout man, who deserves to love, love, and love. He shouldn't have to dirty himself with the diplomacy that Yuddhishthir does, did, and will always do.
His hands can be scarred, his breath can be broken, his bones can be powdered, but he must live on. This is his penance that his brothers are paying, this is his sin that Draupadi was forced to endure. He does not deserve something as forgiving as death.
Yuddhishthir writes letters every six months. To every Kingdom that they were allied to, to every monarch related to them. He makes sure to keep their relations pristine, going through all the formalities and being polite and familiar at all times, ignoring some snide comments that he gets in returning letters.
He knows there will be a war. He knows it in his bones, in his burnt hands and his scars that he reopens every night.
When he walks to the lake where all his brothers lay, Yuddhishthir sheds the calm of an ascetic that he has worked to develop, within a heartbeat. He checks their pulses, his own heart hammering in his ears.
"No, no, no, no, no, no," he keeps chanting, hands shaking as they turn his brothers' faces to himself, checking for signs of venom or poison that he can understand and rush away to find any medicine for. There are none.
The Yaksh's voice is hard to hear at first. Yuddhishthir doesn't think he can hear the disembodied voice above the blood rushing in his ears.
His jaw flexes at the sheer arrogance in the voice and he feels his hands curl into fists, tongue digging against his longer canine teeth.
(He has always felt those particular teeth longer than his brothers have them. He thinks they resemble a dog's canine teeth. Maybe because his father, Dharma Dev, always has two dogs with him and passed down the animalistic aspect of himself to Yuddhishthir. He thinks it might be because of his own habit of gritting his teeth. He thinks it might be because of his need to tear into things and make them bleed—)
Yuddhishthir forces his grief and rage back, to answer the questions.
His brothers matter more than his anger, his grief, his hatred, his sadness. They matter more than anything.
When they walk away from Indraprasth, Yuddhishthir kneels on the ground and puts his forehead against the soil.
"Forgive me, my motherland. Forgive me, father, mother and Mata Madri. Forgive me, Pitamah, Guru Dron, Guru Kripa, uncle Dhritarashtra, aunt Gandhari." He whispers the names of everyone who has died because of him, whispers an apology for being inadequate, for running away. "Forgive me, my wives, my sons, my nephews."
(His Prativindhya, despite being away from him for his formative years, was so much like him, it broke his heart. Was his blood cursed, to bear responsibility like an arrow to the throat? His Yaudheya died because of an infection from a wound from the war that was fought to make Yuddhishthir the King. The throne is made of fire and it burns him, like the pyre burnt his family whole.)
Draupadi, and his younger brothers, let him take the lead again. Even after years of his mistakes and sins and anger, they trust him to lead the way.
As they all fall one by one, Yuddhishthir kisses their foreheads and promises to meet them again. His life was shaped by them. His death shall be as well.
After his father reveals himself to be the dog that accompanied him, he is given a choice. A heaven without his brothers, a hell with his brothers.
Yuddhishthir laughs,"What is family, if it does not give me grief? I would rather be in the worst punishments of hell, if only I am allowed to be with my brothers and wife for eternity."
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