Pregnant King Page 6

  Bending down Pruthalashva looked at his grandson and said, ‘Hurry up. Grow up. Get yourself a wife and give me a great grandson. I don’t have much time. The forest calls me.’

  Pruthalashva waited. And waited. And waited. He heard of the swayamvara at Udra and the excitement in Vallabhi when Yuvanashva entered the city through the new gate with his new bride on his elephant. He heard of the grand marriage and the feast that lasted for twenty-seven days. He heard everything except what he wanted to hear. After five years, he grew tired. He went to Mandavya one day and said, ‘Yuvanashva’s seed stubbornly refuses to sprout.’

  ‘Maybe the field is barren.’

  ‘Surely Shilavati realizes this. Why has she not yet got him a second wife? Does she not realize that she is fettering me?’ Mandavya did not reply. ‘Anyway, I reject this fetter. Great grandson or no great grandson, I wish to go.’

  ‘Please wait. See the face of Yuvanashva’s son and then go.’

  ‘Bondage takes many forms. I will not be enchanted anymore.’

  All the young students and the old teachers of Mandavya’s ashram sat under a great banyan tree and watched the old king set out on his last journey. At the edge of the hermitage, Pruthalashva undid his clothes. Then he picked up a lump of earth, threw it back over his shoulders, and then walked ahead without looking back. He seemed relieved to find freedom at last.

  ‘Maybe he will meet the Pandavas in the forest,’ said Vipula to this father. That was a possibility. After gambling away their kingdom, the five brothers and their common wife spent all their time following the trail of hermits, moving from hermitage to hermitage, meeting Rishis, talking to them, trying to make sense of their miserable lives.

  ‘I don’t think he will care,’ said Mandavya.

  selfish crows

  Mandavya informed Shilavati of her father-in-law’s departure. ‘Pruthalashva entered the third phase of his life without waiting for his grandson to be born. Now he has entered the final phase of his life without even waiting for his great grandson to be conceived. This is not good. The fabric of dharma in Vallabhi is unravelling itself.’

  ‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ said Shilavati. ‘The rains come on time and leave on time. The dharma of Vallabhi is intact.’

  Mandavya remembered what Vipula had said when Pruthalashva walked away into the forest, ‘Here is a man in hurry to give up his throne that was always his and there is a woman clinging to the throne that was never hers.’ He had admonished his son for speaking of the queen that way. Looking at Shilavati’s nonchalance in this matter, he wondered…

  ‘Five years have passed. The princess of Udra has not even suffered a miscarriage. Perhaps the soil is barren; you must consider another field for the royal seed,’ said Mandavya rather forcefully.

  ‘Five years is not a long time. Let us be patient,’ said Shilavati chewing her betel nut and gesturing to her maids to wave the peacock fan more rapidly.

  But the crows were not patient. Five years was a very long time. A loss of over sixty opportunities to be reborn. They cawed and cawed. They flapped their wings and glared impatiently in Shilavati’s dreams.

  ‘The wife may be barren but the mother is not,’ said one crow to another. ‘Two fields separated by a generation. What does it matter where we spring from? Maybe Shilavati should consider offering herself to a suitable man, maybe Mandavya. She still bleeds and he is not that old. Through her at least one of us can be reborn. Her husband may be dead but the field still belongs to his ancestors.’

  Shilavati fell sick the next day. How could the ancestors even think like that? But they did. And they spoke their mind without guilt or shame. The dead have no feelings. No conscience. Just the intense desire to take birth once again. Rebirth. Life. Senses. Feelings.

  Mandavya was acutely aware of Shilavati as a woman. Her breasts were full and hips wide. She could have borne Prasenajit many sons. If only he had not died so young.

  Only once had Mandavya felt desire for the young widow queen. It had happened eight months after Yuvanashva’s birth. The priests felt the royal infant should be placed on the throne to reassure the people of Vallabhi and to tell the Devas that the throne was not empty. But the child howled every time he was taken from his mother’s arms. So the priests decided it was best the mother of the king sat on the throne and the king sat on her lap through the ceremony. She was told to hold the bow for her son. The silver parasol was raised behind her. The yak-tail fly whisks were waved by the most beautiful maids. Instead of the red bindi of brides on her forehead Shilavati had a vertical tilak made of sandal-paste stretching from the tip of her nose right up to her brow. It was the only indicator that she had no husband. She looked so regal, so powerful, so dignified. Everyone looked at her. She belonged on the throne. The young sixteen-year-old bride chosen by the Angirasa. No one noticed the child until he started to cry and demanded the attention of the court. ‘If only she was a man,’ said the Kshatirya council.

  ‘Thank the gods that she isn’t,’ Mandavya heard himself say. Those who overheard him were alarmed. An embarrassed Mandavya realized Kama was shooting an arrow into his heart. He caught the arrow mid-air and broke it. ‘She is like my daughter-in-law; I will not submit to the vulgar arrows of Kama,’ he told himself.

  Mandavya had a wife. A large dark lovable woman named Punyakshi, youngest daughter of a Vaishya elder, given away to Mandavya along with a cow and a bull, a way of marriage in keeping with the way of the Rishi.

  Punyakshi knew she was a ritual tool for her husband, like his water pot and fire sticks and reed mat, a tool to explore the secrets of the cosmos and share it with the kings of Vallabhi. She accepted her fate without question. She loved the hermitage outside Vallabhi. She sat with her husband when he performed the yagna and when he looked up at the sky to decipher the meaning of the stars. She took care of his students like a mother and offered herself to him in her fertile period. He came dispassionately, whispering, ‘This is a yagna. Nothing more. Your thighs are the altar. Your passion the fire. My seed the oblation to my ancestors.’ After the offering of seed, he would walk away without once caressing her.

  On the night of the day Mandavya saw the young Shilavati on the throne he hugged his wife passionately. He bit into her neck and let his tongue explore her ear. He buried his face in her hair, in her breasts, between her thighs. She felt his fingers spread apart the altar. She felt herself devoured by the flames of his passion. This time, after the offering of seed, he lay with her, holding her. Punyakshi felt his tears. What secret was he hiding, she wondered. ‘Let me be the vessel that will hold your venom. Let me be the churn who will purify your soul,’ she whispered in his ears.

  They never spoke of that night again.

  Shilavati sent for Mandavya when she recovered from her illness. ‘My spies tell me that the people of Vallabhi are saying that the king of Vallabhi has been denied the grace of Ileshwara because he is king in name only.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mandavya.

  ‘Do you think it is true?’

  ‘I ask myself if it is your son’s destiny or your desire which comes in the way of Ileshwara’s grace.’

  Shilavati looked straight at Mandavya, ‘Tell me, if I were a man, when would I be expected to retire?’

  ‘After your son has a son.’

  ‘And does my son have a son?’ she asked. Mandavya smiled, realizing the queen was twisting ancient laws to hold on to the throne. He remembered what the Angirasa had said about Shilavati: a girl who had never been taught the dharma-shastras but whose understanding of dharma would put all the kings of Ilavrita to shame. ‘So let us be patient,’ said Shilavati softly.

  ‘Perhaps the prince is sterile, unfit to be king,’ said Mandavya.

  ‘How dare you say such a thing about my son?’ Shilavati’s eyes flashed fire. Then it was her turn to smile. She had underestimated the Acharya. He had trapped her. The only way to prove her son’s virility was to get him another wife. One always blames the cow first. ‘Tongue
s are wagging on the streets of Vallabhi no doubt. We need something to distract the people. A grand royal wedding with feasts and entertainment. Tell me, how can we quickly find a second wife for my son?’

  Mandavya said, ‘The bards say that the daughter of the king of Vanga is destined to bear a son. Astrologers of Vanga, Kashi and Vallabhi have confirmed it. Her father is willing to sell her to the highest bidder. Let us bid for her.’

  second wife

  It was not unknown in Ila-vrita for fathers to sell their daughters. Galava had once asked Yayati to give him a thousand black horses to pay his tuition fees. Yayati had only two hundred. Not wanting to disappoint Galava, he had said, ‘Take my daughter, Madhavi, in place of the rest. She is destined to bear four kings. Surely each one is worth two hundred horses to the men of Ila-vrita who wish to be father of kings.’

  ‘How much am I worth, father?’ asked Pulomi, the princess of Vanga.

  The king of Vanga replied without shame or guilt, ‘You are priceless, my child, but your womb is worth seven hundred cows, three hundred bullocks and a dozen bulls.’

  Pulomi burst into tears. The king of Vanga wanted to hold her, hug her, comfort her but he restrained himself. He had a kingdom to think of. A mysterious disease had killed most of the cows in his land. When cowherds squeezed udders of the surviving cows, they found blood and pus oozing out instead. The bulls had become blind and could barely stand. The bullocks were too weak to pull a plough or a cart.

  ‘It is the wrath of Shiva,’ declared the Brahmanas. ‘He has spat the poison in his throat into your cattle sheds. Maybe we forgot to let him partake of the leftovers of our yagna. Maybe we insulted his dogs, kicked them out without offering them milk. Until we appease him he terrorizes us. We must offer him raw unboiled milk of seven hundred cows.’

  ‘Where are the cows?’ asked the king of Vanga.

  ‘In Vallabhi. And they will come to us if you accept Shilavati’s offer.’

  The king of Vanga accepted the offer. The daughter was sold. Seven hundred cows, three hundred bullocks, a dozen bulls, each one decorated with bright red tassels and copper-plated horns made their way on great barges down the Kalindi to Vanga. The residents of Panchala who saw the passing ships told their daughters, ‘That is how an Asura marries an Apsara.’

  A few days later they saw another barge decorated with marigold flowers. In it sat Pulomi dressed in red and gold, accompanied by her maids and fifty Kshatriya warriors who had come all the way from Vallabhi to fetch her. The banner of the Turuvasus with the image of a turtle fluttered from the ship mast. The daughters of Panchala said, ‘There goes the Madhavi of Vanga.’

  object of pleasure

  Before the cows and bullocks and bulls left Vallabhi for Vanga, Yuvanashva had gone to Simantini. ‘I will not buy her without your permission, Bharya,’ he said, looking into her sad eyes.

  She touched the tips of his fingers and said in a choked voice, ‘I have done everything I could. Every new moon night, I am the first woman to offer jabakusuma flowers to Ileshwari. Every time I bleed, I make offerings of gold cradles to the tamarind tree in the corner room. I eat no spices and drink buttermilk to cool my body. I have talismans hanging round my neck, my arms and my waist. I have walked round the seven goddess’ shrines in Tarini-pur. I have asked the priestesses of Bahugami to dance around me. But still my womb has failed to hold your seed. I have failed you Arya. You need another wife.’

  ‘The fault could be mine,’ said Yuvanashva. Every night he was haunted by a vision of hundreds of dhatura flowers, brown with age, offered by him to Ileshwara Mahadev, tumbling down as the lord who is both god and goddess looked over his shoulder at all the other men prostrating in the temple on full moon days. So many men, all fathers. And he, alone, childless, graceless, rejected by the gods.

  Simantini looked at her husband with a horrified expression on her face. She put her hand on his mouth. ‘Please don’t say such things, Arya. You are the perfect husband. The perfect man. So tender. So gentle. So giving. No woman could ask for more. Go ahead, get yourself a new wife. A fertile field for the royal seed. She will be my sister.’

  Simantini did not tell Yuvanashva what the priestesses of Bahugami said in their trance as they danced round her. Waving branches of neem, they kept repeating in shrill hoarse voices, ‘He is fertile. Yes, he is fertile. Oh yes, he is fertile. The goddess smiles upon him. He is fertile and he will have a son.’ It frightened her.

  Yuvanashva sensed the pain in Simantini. Her sense of invalidation. But he had to take another wife. He had to father a son. It was his duty. He was told that the Brahmanas had decided to conduct the garbhadana samskara to ensure conception. This rite of passage made the private act between husband and wife a public spectacle.

  A hundred and eight sumangalis, married women who had borne sons and whose husbands were alive, stood at the gate of Vallabhi to welcome Pulomi. They blew conch-shell trumpets to ward off the malevolent spirits. They poured water on Pulomi to wash the dust of the journey and then prepared to place on her the sixteen love-charms that make a woman a bride. They anointed her with turmeric and then sandal paste. They dressed her in a fresh sari, red with a border of gold. They tied her hair and decorated it with a garland of champaka flowers. They painted her feet red with alta. They made her wear finely crafted gold jewels specially made for the occasion: toe-rings, two types of anklets, two types of cummerbands, one above the navel and one below, four types of bangles, two types of bracelets, two types of armlets, rings for all ten fingers, three types of necklaces, one binding the neck, one around the breasts, one slipping in between, nose-rings for the left, right and centre, two earrings, a hairpin, a band for the crown of the head and another for the brow.

  ‘By the time the prince removes these jewels he will be too exhausted to do anything,’ said one of the maids from Vanga.

  ‘One look at our prince and your princess will remove all the jewellery herself,’ retorted a maid from Vallabhi.

  The main courtyard of the palace was lined with mango leaves and marigold flowers for the wedding. Pulomi felt alone. If only her father could be present during the ceremony where a bride’s father formally gives her hand to the groom. ‘This is a mere formality. The moment your father accepted Vallabhi’s cattle, he had given you away. This ritual to simply tell the Devas that you have accepted Yuvanashva as your groom and they should not even think about seducing you.’

  As a child, Pulomi had grown up listening to stories of Devas seducing nymphs and young girls without husbands. The bards told her once, ‘The gods exist to bring life on earth. They miss no opportunity. They carry pollen of plants and seeds of animals in every direction looking for ripe unclaimed wombs. So better tell your father to get you a groom fast before they make you pregnant or you will end up as Kunti, mother before marriage.’

  Her head was bent and eyes lowered when the priest placed her hand on Yuvanashva’s palm. She did not see him when he lined the parting of her hair with red vermilion powder. She did not see him when he tied a string of beads, black as mustard seeds, round her neck. She did not see him when he placed his palm on her chest and requested her to make a place for him in her heart. She did not see him when she placed a garland round his neck and walked around the sacred fire with him. She did not see him when together they took the seven steps that makes man and woman husband and wife.

  When she finally saw him, it was night. He held her chin and raised her face. She kept her eyes closed. Afraid of the Asura. ‘Open your eyes,’ he said. His voice was deep and rich and soft. She did. He looked like no Asura. He was radiant like the moon. He had brown eyes. His moustache was thick and well curled. His hair soft and long. She felt her heart beating faster. Her lips went dry. She had a deep desire to touch him. He looked so curious. So welcoming. So unthreatening. He tilted her head and kissed her. She did not know what to do. Was he not supposed to point to the Arundhati star? Was she not supposed to pretend she did not know where it was?

  Ou
tside, the priests chanted loudly so that the couple inside could hear them, ‘Now that Vishnu has prepared the field, let Brahma bring forth the seed. May Vishwakarma shape the child and Vayu breathe in the life.’ This rhythmic chant had the potent power to help the soil cling to the seed and transform it into a sapling. Farmers chanted it while sowing seed and herdsmen when they brought the bull to the cow.

  Inside, Yuvanashva made love to his new wife with great care. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, soft as dough, and lively as a lotus. So different from his first wife, the only other woman he knew. This one stirred his flesh in a way Simantini never did. He could not wait for the ceremonies to end. He did not have the patience to bother with the Arundhati star. He removed her jewels quickly, caressing her skin, kissing it, licking it, gently coaxing her juices to flow.

  At first, Pulomi was embarrassed, scared, stiff. Then as she felt secure waves of feelings enveloped her. She wanted her husband to hurry up. For what, she was not sure. But she could not ignore the impatience of her flesh, the desperate desire for an unknown fulfilment. She placed her hand on his buttocks. Slowly, hesitatingly, she started to knead them.

  He gasped. She stopped. He looked at her. He had never experienced this with Simantini. Being the object of pleasure. He liked the feeling. He smiled in satisfaction and then started licking her ears, burying his tongue deep, liberating her from all inhibitions. She let herself enjoy him.

  The chants outside continued. Yuvanashva found them annoying. They reminded him why he had been given a new wife. At that moment, as he felt waves of pleasure with each thrust, he did not want Vishwakarma to shape anything. All he wanted was Kama to help him share the waves of pleasure with this girl who desired him as much as he desired her. She had never known the touch of a man. She wanted to explore him. He wanted to be explored. That feeling of being wanted, not by obligation, but by desire, thrilled him. This wife would surely be the favourite.