Fragments of a Shattered Image: Fragment 9

Satya sat down on a couch. Her limbs ached.

'I'm growing old,' she thought. But that was only to be expected. She grew more tired but less sleepy. She also felt less hungry these days, though her memory was still sharp.

Small mercies, thought Satya. Small mercies.

She sighed. Her tiredness and physical aches were less than the grief of her heart. The last rites of her grandson was over. His five sons were so small. She wondered if her step son and grandson would care for those.

She had no energy left to worry for them now.

She looked up as her son was announced.

"Krishna," she smiled at him. He was called Vyasa by all these days, Veda Vyasa. But to her he would always be Krishna.

"Mother," he bent down to touch her feet.

"Ayushman bhavah" she blessed him.

"Mother," he said as he sat down next to her on her invitation. "It is time you left the palace. It is time for you to leave the world behind."

She gazed at him. He was right of course. She should leave for the forest. It was the way of things, of life.

She sighed again. She had buried her husband, two sons and now a grandson. She did not want to watch more deaths. Her son was right. She should leave.

She gave him a faint smile and nodded.

"It is time," she echoed.

Fragments from a Shattered Image

Fragment 4

Her eyes were dry now. She was past tears. What more could fate have in store for her! First her husband had died, leaving her widowed and with two small sons, not yet old enough to take the reins of the Kingdom.

But Bheeshma had been there. In spite of her tearful pleading to be King, he had refused, choosing to be regent instead. He respected her and sought her advice and it surprised her to no end when he started following her advice.

Satya had bloomed under her husband’s love and affection and when Chitrangada was born, she was content. Vichitravirya was an added blessing. She had contemplated a happy and contented old age when she and her husband could leave the Kingdom in Chitrangada's able hands and leave for the forest. With Bheeshma to guide and advise him, she had no doubt her son would lead the Kurus to even greater glory than before.

But all those dreams had been dashed to pieces when her husband had died so unexpectedly. Though he was very much older than her, she had never paid much attention to the difference in their ages. But at the moment of his death, she had noticed how worn and tired he looked. She had stopped her tears till his death, because he had always wanted to see her happy and smiling.

"Devavrata," he had whispered. He was the only one who still called Bheeshma by his given name. Devavrata had knelt by the bedside.

"I will take care of my brothers, father," he had said. "Chitrangada shall be a worthy successor."

Satya had seen the flash of anguish in her husband’s eyes as he gazed at his eldest son. Instinctively, she knew that Shantanu wanted Bheeshma to be King after him, and she too felt that it was the right decision. She had pleaded with him, even ordered him, but he was adamant. His vow was no light matter. He would not break it.

Then had come her father's death. He had sent for her from his deathbed. It was Bheeshma who took her to him. She had also taken her sons along.

"They are fine boys," Dasharaja had wheezed. "That elder one will make a fine king."

"Why, father?" She had asked him. "I would have been content even if my sons had to remain as princes. Bheeshma deserves to be king. He is worthy in every way."

"Maybe," he had said. "But it was my right to demand that for you. They could have refused."

"I don’t deny you had the right. But why such an ambition? Why King?"

He had looked at her, "I had the right," he had said finally.

She had sighed. "I do not," she had said.

He had fidgeted and then said. "You are the daughter of a King. I am only your adoptive father."

She had stared at him in consternation, believing his words and yet disbelieving.

"I am not going to tell you who your real father was. But you are a Princess. You have the right to be queen and your sons have the right to be Kings!"

She had turned from him, her thoughts in turmoil. Daughter of a King! Adopted by a fisherman. That spoke volumes for her status! She might have been a King's daughter, but there was no doubt that she was illegitimate. She was suddenly infinitely grateful to her father, not the unnamed King, but to the man she had called father all her life.

He had died the next day and she had returned to the palace after the funeral, not revealing the truth to anyone, not even to Bheeshma.

She had thought all her travails over when Chitrangada was crowned King. She had also seen the palpable relief in Bheeshma's normally impassive face. He had felt he too could relax his vigil.

And now this. Satya sighed. She had no more tears left to cry.

"Mother," Bheeshma walked in, still dusty and disheveled from his journey. He had not stopped to change. He had rushed in to see her straightaway.

She held out her hand and he took them, kneeling before her.

"If you had been there, he would not have died," it was not an accusation, but a simple statement of fact. Bheeshma was invincible in battle. Had he been in Hastinapura, the Gandharva would never have dared challenge her Chitrangada to a battle.

Bheeshma's hands tightened over hers. "Shall I get the Gandharva’s head for you?" His voice was even.

She shook her head. She had had enough tragedies, enough fighting, enough death. Revenge would not bring her son back. "Your brother needs you. Hastinapura needs you. Till Vichitravirya is old enough to be King, you should be here, by his side. And afterwards too."

He had gone to put down a rebellion in the eastern provinces. They both knew he had had to go. The rebellion had been crushed and he was on the way back when the news of his brother’s death had reached him.

"Chitrangada died in battle, as befitting a Kshatriya," Bheeshma said. "Be comforted, mother."

She nodded. It was cold comfort to a mother, but her son had not shamed his heritage, fighting valiantly till the end.

Fragments from a Shattered Image

Fragment 2

Satya wondered why she was destined to meet this man that day of all days. It had been a busy day for her, and she had returned from ferrying the last of her passengers across. She was still waiting, in case someone came along. No one generally came, but sometimes a stray traveler would come seeking a way across the river.

Sometimes Krishna would come, accompanied by his father. Sometimes he would come alone. He was old enough now to travel on his own. She did not resent it that he was close to his father or that he wanted to be a sage. She knew her resentment would only drive a wedge between herself and her son, so she swallowed it and learned to let go of it.

But on that day, the one who came to her was a total stranger and he was seeking, not a way across the river, but Satya's home. He was tall and majestic and she could see that he was almost as old as her father. But he was not wrinkled or stooped, but handsome still and stood straight as a sapling. He was like the Kings in the tales that the village story teller used to tell her so many years ago. He had gazed at her in wonder and then had asked her for her name and asked about her father and asked where he could find him.

She had told him, wondering if he had come to buy the new boat her father had built. Boats were her father’s passion and his boats were bought by Kings and Princes from far.

Seeing his grandeur, Satya wished he had found her in the morning before she started her work, before she became all sweaty and her hairs all blown out of the coil in which she had wound them in the morning.

Satya had forgotten all about him by the time she returned home that day.

For the next few days, Satya noticed a sense of impatience coupled with a suppressed excitement in her father. She wondered why that was; she had never seen him like that. But her questions elicited no straight answers. He made vague references to good fortune and Goddess Lakshmi from which Satya could understand that he had had an opportunity for realizing his ambitions. She always knew her father was ambitious, though what exactly his ambitions were, were a mystery to her. She wondered if some coastal chieftain or ruler had hired him to build a fleet of boats.

All speculation ended the day the chariot bearing the standard of Hastinapura came to their hut in the morning. Her father had hurried out eagerly, but had stopped with face pale as he saw the man who stepped out. Satya had looked at the stranger. He was dressed in white and was young, though she could not tell if he was older or younger than her.

Something about him reminded her of the man she met the other day. But there was an arrogance about this man that was lacking in the other one. She stood just inside the door as he looked around with a kind of surprised wonder.

"Are you Dasharaja?" he asked, his voice deep and resonant. Her father had nodded and asked him to come in. Satyavati went into the kitchen as her father led their guest to the room which served as their dining and bed rooms, spread a mat and bade him to sit.

Fragments from a Shattered Image

Fragment 1

The girl wiped off the sweat from her brow. She gazed up at the sky. The sun was too bright that day just as it had been the past week. Yet, the village astrologer had predicted rains. She snorted as she thought of him. Him and his rains!!

She looked all around. The woods were still. An occasional breeze skimmed the grass and reached the trees, only to die a strangling death among their branches. The river's surface too was unmarred by ripples.

She sat down wearily on a rock on the shade of a tree. She was grateful for the shade. It was boring, this work of ferrying the occasional passenger across. And tiring too. She looked at her arms in distaste. They were tanned brown from the hours she spent in the sun. And she was already dark to begin with.

She would not have felt so bad if she hadn’t heard the stories of princes and princesses told by the village storyteller. Beautiful they were, according to the story teller, fair and shapely with ornaments adorning their limbs and fragrant with oils and unguents. Not like Satya who was dusky and smelling of fish. And the princes were handsome and brave wearing golden armor and divine weapons, quite unlike the men in Satya's village who carried fish nets and looked taciturn.

Absently, she picked up a blade of grass and began to chew on it.

It was thus the sage found her. In the first blush of her youth, her lovely eyes fixed on the faraway horizon, a blade of grass between her teeth, her pose was languid and seductive.

The girl was unconscious of the picture she presented. She was aware of her arms and body, baked brown from the sun, of her clothes which she was beginning to grow out of and which were patched at several places, of the fishy odour which refused to leave her no matter how many times she bathed, of the calluses in her hands and feet from her hard labour and miles of walking.

The man saw the shapely limbs, the clothes barely adequate to cover her youthful body, her curves straining against them. He saw the straight nose, the firm jaw, the dimpled cheek. He saw her as a temptation and wondered if he should leave.

But he had to cross the river and go to the ashram that day. That decided it for him. He was a sage with control over the senses, he told himself. He was not going to lose control over some fisher girl ferrying the boat no matter how attractive she was.

Even the odor of fish that clung to her combined with the musk of her sweat was intoxicating him.

'Stop it, Parasara,' he told himself sternly.

Satyavati saw the young sage and she rose from where she sat.

"O venerable one," said she. "Do you wish to go across?"

The sage nodded. He was nice looking, she noticed, or would have been if his expression was not so forbidding. There was a look in his eyes that made her tremble, though not from fear. And yet, there was something frightening about him too.

He boarded the boat in silence, his eyes not leaving her. She felt as if his eyes were devouring her whole and she shivered though the day was hot.

"Where to, O great one?"

The question was only a formality. They all came here to go to the ashram on the north east. It was a journey Satya did not like, for sometimes the fog banks would roll in and once they did, they would stay for hours. It would be impossible to guide the boat and Satya would have to drop anchor and wait it out. It would get so cold that she would shiver and worst of all would be her passengers who seemed totally unaware of the situation and would sit still and silent without saying a word.

"The ashram." His voice was a croak, as if his throat was dry.

No wonder, thought she. It was such a hot day.

As she pushed off from the bank, she noticed the fly caught in a spider's web on the grass near the landing. No time to free that now, she thought, feeling agitated. Her passenger would not like waiting. With a sigh, she dropped the pole and picked up the oars.

In later years, Satya asked herself many times if she could have done something differently. Something. Anything. But her mind never gave any answers. It mocked her for being a fool. He was a powerful sage. What could a fisher girl like you have done? It asked her. Why do you even think that you had the power to do anything?

When the fog rolled in, Satya had expected another boring wait. In retrospect, she would have exchanged that afternoon for all the boredom in the world.

"I am a powerful sage," he had told Satya when it was over. "As such no sin will come to you for this."

Satya had heard his words, but had not believed them. She had lost her belief in sages.

Her father had been aghast when he learned the truth. He had been angry but he was practical enough to know that Satya was helpless to stop what had happened. He was also a shrewd man. He had sent Satya to his sister who lived in one of the islands that dotted the great river. And he had also tracked down the sage.

Her father had made a big gamble counting on the sage's youth when he threatened to publicize his act unless he took responsibility for the baby that was growing inside Satya. The sage had less to fear from exposure. Satya's father knew this. If the sage had called his bluff, there was nothing else he could have done but to bury his dreams and his grand ambitions.

But his reading of human nature was not faulty, as it turned out. Parasara was contrite. He agreed to take responsibility for the child. He would have been happy never to see Satya or her father again. It was Satya who stipulated that the child's whereabouts be informed to her.

All that was a thing of the past now. Years had passed. Satya still had nightmares of arms holding her like vices… of hot breath fanning her body… of a knee nudging her legs apart... and in her nightmares, her voice was not stolen by fear and she screamed her “No!” so loud the skies echoed them back.

But in spite of the nightmares, all Satya felt was a curious kind of indifference when she thought of the sage. She was grateful to the sage for two things. The first was the child. Her son Krishna, the dark one who was named Dwaipayana by his father as he was born on an island. The second was for teaching her how to get rid of her body odor and the fishy smell. The sage had told her how to extract fragrances from flowers and herbs and how to use them so that her body would remain fragrant for hours. In fact, she became known as Yojanagandha among her people who were amazed at how fish smelling Satya suddenly became so sweet smelling. Her aunt thought it was the sage's magic. Satya never attempted to correct her. She knew that her aunt's superstition was the best protection for her reputation.