Her eyes kept following the toddler as he made his
way through the room. He was crawling towards Panchali who was cooing to him
and beckoning him forth. He tried to stand up, took a few tentative steps and
wobbled as he was reaching towards her. Instinctively,
her reflexes sprung and she rushed to catch him before he fell.
She needn’t have worried. Draupadi’s strong hands
had already caught him.
Her gaze turned towards the First Lady of
Hastinapura. The Iron-woman herself. Her luscious hair now tinged grey, the
regal bearing intact, she was now cajoling the baby into eating something.
She remembered the first time she had met the
queen who reigned over the Pandavas. The
derisive gaze, the haughtiness in her stance, the underlying anger at the new
entrant into Arjuna’s life. For her part, she had been meek and subservient,
just as Arjuna had asked her to be. Over time, she had formed a cordial yet
endearing bond with her. And over the years she had realized that they had much
more in common than just Arjuna.
After all, their lives were guided by the same
person. Keshava, the unification of the lord of creation and the lord of
destruction.
The One who made sure they followed the path of
Dharma. At least the Dharma that he said they had to adhere to.
They had both given up their first loves upon his
word. They had both let their progeny ride in to the war, knowing fully well
that they were riding into meet their death, upon his word.
But now, thinking back she wondered if it had been
the right thing. If they should have stood up to him and not just taken him at
his word. If all these adversities and the conflict could have been averted had
they been allowed to be with the one who had usurped their hearts. But then,
Krishna could be more convincing and persuasive than anyone else she knew. She could
imagine how he must have persuaded Draupadi to choose Arjuna over Karna, just
as he had persuaded her to choose Arjuna over Suyodhana.
Suyodhana.
Even after all these years, her heart skipped a beat
when she thought about him.
Her first love. Him with his gentle demeanour and soft
nature. Her happiest moments were with him, sitting by the riverside, his head in
her lap, talking about all things substantial and trivial, the spells few and
far between. He confided everything in her. Of the Pandavas bullying him and
his brothers, of the Gurus favouring Arjuna over anyone else, of his immense respect
for her eldest brother, Balarama, and about how he had tried everything in his
might to ensure cordial relations between the cousins and yet somehow, his plans were foiled every single time.
And then like a flood, the memories fast-forwarded
to their home in Dwaraka and Krishna talking to her in that soothing
mellifluous voice of his. Persuading her to sacrifice her love for the greater
good. Stressing upon her, the part she was tasked to fulfil in the purging of
the evil in the world, gently revealing to her who she really was and how she
came upon to her present avatar, confiding in her about the manifestations of
the Gods and Goddesses and the role they had to play during the transition of
the yugas, from the Treta Yuga to the Kali Yuga.
[Pic courtesy: Maha Maya - https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vHKdkS5OZoQ/hqdefault.jpg]
Swayed, she had sacrificed her love for him and
embraced the love of another. For the greater good. For that choice of hers was
the focal point of gentle Suyodhanas’s transformation to his present moniker,
Duryodhana. She had sent Abhimanyu into the war, with a mustered bravado and
blessing for a long life which she knew would never ensue. For his demise would
be the pivot motivating Arjuna to wreak havoc upon the so-called enemies, his
own kith and kin.
And as for Arjuna, even though she was his favoured
one, her respect for him diminished that fateful day in the Sabha. The day, the
man touted to be the greatest archer, failed to stand up for his first love – Draupadi,
succumbing to the actions of the depraved men, binding himself to the trivial
words of a king who had staked his own wife as wager in a wrongful game of
dice.
She remembered the hollow look in the proud queen’s
eyes, the pale face and the simmering rage within. She recalled taking her cold
hands into her own, putting her to sleep like she would a small child. She thought
of how the once statuesque queen had whimpered and convulsed, reliving those appalling
moments.
Like a mother would care for her young, Yoga Maya had
comforted the manifestation of Shakti.
And so, it had all begun and ended as the wheel of
fate had spun her life into unmanageable twists and turns.
Yet here she was, now a grandmother.
She was drawn back into the present-day, by the
young one pulling at her saree, pleading with her to play with him. Her grand-son.
The one who wrested over death while in the womb
itself. The one who survived.
For in him, ran the blood of the Matsyas, the
Kurus and the Yadavas.
Abhimanyu’s progeny. Parikshit.