Hidden Truths
It had become pitch dark, the darkness of the night spoke of the ghastly pallor that the country was enveloped in, as a consequence of the eighteen-day long holocaust, which had its aftermath proliferating profusely in the land.
And in such darkness, a steed neighed, with all its might, as it got egged on to ride its way to a particular destination.
The frothing, fuming animal, and its equally weary rider, sped their way to an inconspicuous land, where the latter sought his carrier to be driven.
And then, the horse halted, at a place which seemed to resemble a gateway to a palace. A princely abode, as was apparent to the eyes, and one which bore the relics of the war that had ended only days ago, as did other such dwellings both princely and otherwise, in the entire length and width of Aryavarta.
"It is the Emperor!" one of the palace guards hissed to his companions.
"Hail! Hail, Your Majesty!" a slew of guards came puffing to receive,the Supreme Ruler of the entire land of Aryavarta.
"What does the Emperor warrant of the petty land of the Saivyas?" one of them puffed, while another held the reins of his tired steed to lead it to comfort in the stable of the fallen state.
The weary Emperor descended his mount and looked around at the slew of guards surrounding him. He couldn't help but marvel at the magnitude of hospitality they extended towards him, despite the fact that their land had been depleted of its warmth and pleasantries following the carnage of Kurukshtera.
"Honourable tribesmen of the valiant clan of the Saivyas,-" He said, much to the content of those soldiers filled with reverent fervour, "I seek a parley with the Princess." he concluded his wish, and his purpose of his secretive visit to the land that he had set foot in.
The guards looked at each other, sharing uncomfortable glances, and discontented whispers of queasiness amongst themselves. Evidently, the Emperor's request was not desirable, considering the intricacies of the time.
"Is my request unworthy?" He inquired.
The reply came as a repetition of the queasy discomfort between the soldiers.
"Dharmaraja!" came the voice of an elderly soldier, "The Princess, ever since the slaughter of Kurukshetra, and the demise of our valiant Yaudheya, has renounced the comfort of company."
"Just once, it is just once that I seek her. I desire to share her grief. Wasn't Yaudheya my child as well?" he pleaded.
A glance of reassuring warmth ensued from the elderly man's eyes, much to the comfort of the Emperor of the war-scarred land of Aryavarta.
***
She had been in her chamber for days together, and had lost all sense of night and day, past and present, fair and foul. Life itself had become a burden for her. An excruciatingly painful and leaden, listless burden of the blood that thumped ceaselessly through her veins, elevated her agonisingly unceasing pain of the loss of her child. Her life was now, a vacuum, which perpetually kept sucking at her soul, draining it off with every passing moment which did nothing but heighten her agony.
And yet, she was alive. A part of her instinct told her to cling to her breath, for a purpose that was still incomplete. She had to stay alive for a final right which she had to set claim on, after having lived a life that warranted multiple renunciations of her, which in turn were a result of the considerations that a secondary wife of an Emperor had to bear with.
"Devika!" he called out softly.
The answer to her final prayers had come. He, had arrived, finally, like she had known he would.
"Devika!" he called out again, causing her to breathe sharply, the silence surrounding her, punctuated with his soft, stately footfalls.
"Finally here to showcase your condolences, aren't you?" she thought, acrimoniously.
All these years, she had graciously accepted her marriage as a political alliance, like most of the royal marriages were, in Aryavarta. As Yudhishthir's second wife, she had never spent much time with him, barring the few instances when he was not serving his time as Panchali's husband. He had other duties as well, which rose as a result of him being the ruler of Indraprastha, the declared capital of Bharata.
Everything said and done, Yudhishthir, used to visit her once in a blue moon, and very slowly and steadily, those visits receded themselves, and her husband became confined to the occasional parchments sent to her which bore the weight and the length of his thoughts and whereabouts and reasons for his absence, wrapped in hugely convoluted sentences and phrases which were more often than not tiring to read, decipher and understand.
Even then, she accepted it with all her grace as befitted a princess. She used all her tenderness and her affection towards her absentee husband to channelise those feelings in the upbringing of their child.
The child which he had sired with her, to serve as an evidence of their marital alliance, the child on whom she had bestowed her entire life, the child who had always known his father by those enormous eloquent letters he used to send them, the child born to her as an excuse of the fact that kings and princes took multiple wives to ensure progeny, and not for sensual pleasure, was now dead.
He was dead because his father had summoned him to fight a war that was not related to him in anyway. Yaudheya, like the other princes who had been begotten by the men of the Kuru lineage had served as a sacrificial offering in the name of their so-called Dharma.
And that very Dharma, warranted the man standing in her chamber to reckon the act of the ritual disrobing of a woman in a court full of men to be ethical, when the eldest Kaurava had asked him if he could do anything to the Panchala Princess, who had been enslaved because he had lost her in a wager.
Those few meaningless words embedded in those dry sacred texts, bereft of their essence, had legitimised the act of pawning one's own brothers, and their common wife, in a frivolously meaningless wager, which was clearly avoidable.
It all started with him, she thought to herself. For her the Son of Dharma was equally censurable for the benighted evening and the domino effect thereafter, which had culminated in a bloodbath that the land of Bharata would be reeling under, for bearing the brunt of adherence to ethics.
So, Devika, straightened herself, and turned to look at Dharmaraja.
***
He was feeling uncomfortable under her gaze. Somehow, for the past thirteen years, and even before that, sometimes, silences made him feel a sensation of a distinct discomfort. For the infallible Son of Dharma, speech held more comfort since it could be defied by sermonising and its consequent effects of justification.
But silences, were impervious to the exhortations he could administer.
"Why do you priviledge our petty land by your presence, O Righteous One!" she inquired, breaking the silence.
Yudhishthir felt a distinctive bitterness, cloaked in the calmness of her tone. An acrimony, uncharacteristic of his lovable Devika.
"I know, you hold me responsible for Yaudheya's death-," he answered, with a note of unsurety in his otherwise steady voice. "But he was my son as well. And I loved him with the same fervour as you did. His loss affects me as dearly as the loss of the other valiant princes of Kuru Vamsa."
Dharmaraja, with his usual eloquence with words, how typical, she thought.
"So, are you here to demonstrate your condolences for a child who you barely considered to be your own?"
He was at a complete loss for words. Devika's questions were somehow turning out to hold an amount of venom that he had come to face in the arrows that had been showered on him in the 18-day carnage of Kurukshetra.
"I cannot present you with any words that could possess the prowess to console you out of your grief, Devika." he answered.
"But I do not seek consolation, Dharmaraja." she said.
"Then, what is it that you desire of your husband?" he asked her earnestly.
Devika's lips curved into a smile bereft of even the minutest trace of warmth. A smile that sent an unusual chill down his spine.
"They say, you never resort to anything other than truth, and righteousness,-", she began,"-Even in the gravest of adversities, the Son of Dharma never wavers from his adherence to ethics. Isn't that so?"
A corner in his heart jolted uncomfortably.
"Tell me, Your Majesty-" she continued, "Don't ethics justify the protection of one's own from an impending adversity?"
A rush of bitter bile rose in Yudhishthir's throat. She was raising a finger at his righteousness that warranted reverence from the rest of the land of Bharata.
The righteous image of the Son of Dharma, which held itself even though a part of his conscience kept pricking him of his culpability that he feared to face.
"Had the Kaurava, not engineered the vicious Game of Dice, this wouldn't have happened." he answered, leading her face to show its vitriolic smile, yet again.
She snorted.
"Had you denied the invitation, the Kaurava, would not be possessed with the opportune circumstances for the Game to be conducted."
"Denial of an invitation to Dice, and a summon for war is an impropriety for a Kshatriya." Yudhishthir answered.
"And how far is it proper for a Kshatriya, to wager his brothers? How far is it proper for a man who had lost himself to being enslaved by another, to wager his wife? To what degree is it justified to leave her at the mercy of circumstance when she is sought to be disrobed at the hands of a man, in the presence of a court full of men deemed to warriors and intellectuals of the greatest merit in the entire land of Bharata?" she inquired.
"We were manacled by the laws of the land. The Nyaya Shastra clearly enumerates laws for slavery and marriage. How could we stand in defiance of laws that regulate society and bring forth order?" Yudhishthir dared to utter much to her disgust.
"And does the Nyaya Shastra prohibit the defence of one's own self?" she acrimoniously questioned him.
Silence followed. The man who had satisfactorily answered the dicey questions of the Yaksha, was now speechless. He felt naked under Devika's acerbic glare.
"Was it just sheer adherence to ethics that bade you accept the Kaurava's invitation? Were you not, even infinitesimally, affected by wanton lust for the throne of Hastinapur? Did you not suspect the involvement of treachery? Or, were you so naive that you'd thought that the eldest Kaurava would forgive his humiliation in Indraprastha, and not resort to something vindictive?" she asked him, yet again, posing questions on his dignity.
Again, his conscience lurched, uncomfortably. Despite everyone's warnings, and despite knowing that Duryodhan would not let go of his humiliation, he had assented to the invitation. Inspite of knowing, full well, that Panchaali would be targeted, and, Shakuni would have a key role in this treachery, he had walked into the trap, thinking his skill in dice would prevail over the foreigner's wit in calculations and his way with words. He did desire for the throne of Hastinapur, and hence had relied on chance to gain the same, despite the fact, that the entire land of Aryavarta had accepted his suzerainty. Today, all his hidden desires were under Devika's scrutiny, and words had no support for the Son of Dharma.
He remembered, how he had wanted the copper-skinned, ravishing fireborn to be his, when he had set eyes on her, and how he had jumped at the proposal of her marriage to the five of them, by justifying it by way of quoting elaborate ethics in front of her unwilling father. He recollected, the wave of relief he had felt, when Arjun had been sent to a 12-year long pilgrimage, as a result of entering his chamber while he was in Panchaali's arms, in a moment of erotica.
His decisions came fleeting to him, all at once, sickening him to the core, making him realise that he was equally responsible for a war that had his side to emerge as victors.
Yudhishthir bowed, and drew his sword, and stretched it to Devika's hands, and said, "Slay me, dear one, if you will. I do not find words or arguments potent enough to justify my deeds to you!"
Devika hacked out a virulent, sarcastic laugh that seared through him, making him desire death, more than ever.
"Fie upon you!" she spat. "Fie upon you all who, who in the quest for kingship, battered the entire land of the pious King Bharata! Fie upon you all, who, certify a bloodbath to be justice, when you all, by the vile virtue of your weakness aroused the wrath of the Goddess! Fie upon the proud class of the Kings who considered naught in the pursuit of their vile lust for a petty throne, leading lives to be destroyed in a genocide that could well be avoided! Now, that I stand here, looking at you, I dearly desire that I had been widowed as well, since your very shadow, pains me excruciatingly!"
Yudhishthir closed his eyes, and breathed her words in.
"I bid you live! I bid you live and witness the pain you all brought forth in the wave of destruction! I bid to live to atone for the holocaust that spared no one, not even the children you held dear to succeed yourself to the throne! And right now, I bid you get out of my sight, forever!" she concluded, and turned away from him.
Finally, Yudhishthir drew himself to stand on his feet, and retraced his path back to the stables to his steed that would carry him back to Hastinapur, in conclusion to his visit to his second wife, Devika, reassuring himself, that history would always favour the victorious.
Though, questions would always be posed by a few.
Disclaimer:
1. This is a work of fiction and is reflective of one of the perspectives of the author, and doesn't intend to be blasphemous, or hurt the sentiments of anyone.
2. Yaudheya and Devika have been mentioned in places, and considering the fact that none of the young princes survived, it has been concluded that he too was slain.
3. This work does not claim historical authenticity.