Amba and Draupadi

Amba: I am your sister. You seem to think it strange!

Draupadi: My sister? But I do not understand: the world is well acquainted with Dhrishtadyumna and Draupadi. We were born of the sacrificial fire: but who are you? I have never set mine eyes on you.

A: You make me smile: know you not Shikhandin, the Killer of Acharya Bheeshma?

D: Ah! yes, I remember. Indeed, how could I have forgotten? You are the great AMBA–born again into this world of Sin with but one aim–to kill Bheeshma.

A: Even as you were born into this world with but one aim –to destroy.

D: Destroy? But What?

A: Why, the entire World, to be sure. Know you not that when you were born the Heavens prophesied that the Death of all Earth was born?

D: So, that is how we are sisters: born to kill–both of us. So let it be. You, Amba, you loved my Lord, Gangeya, did you not? How then could you kill him?

A: I killed him because I loved him: Strange? Perhaps.

D: Why so sad a moan? Can I not share your pain? Your anguish? Can I not quell the ache in that mighty heart of yours, so full of love, so full of bitterness?

A: You are indeed my sister.–Else, how can you understand the wealth of love in my heart? How else can you hear the pitiful, painful throb of it?

D: Tell me, I have heard from my Lord Yudhishtira how our Pitamaha carried away from the Svayamvara hall the three Princesses: I heard too, that you went to Salva.

A: How well I remember the events of that day: the Svayamvara, and its aftermath. My Lord Salva was there, and I thought of garlanding him. But the Prince of Hastina was quicker than thought. He lifted us on to his chariot and bore us away to his palace. We heard that we were meant to be his brother’s brides. It pleased me not to be the wife of his brother’s Vichitraveerya.

I thought I loved Salva: Gangeya heard that my heart was not in Hastinavati–He was a Prince indeed! At once he sent me to Salva. You know how I was repulsed by him. It was because a Kshatriya Prince had carried me away by force.

Like a little craft on the sea, tossed and drifted between two mighty waves, my fragile heart broke. I knew then that I loved Gangeya, the great Prince of the Kuru House.

D: Tradition has it, that he fought with Bhargava even like Sree Rama. Is it true?

A: Can one describe that mighty war? I knew how fierce were the shafts sent by my Lord; not indeed by his expression, since that was gentle, sad, reluctant, both to hurt the hand that fed him. But I knew from the wounds on the master’s hardy frame. I loved Devavrata. This, then, was the man worthy of all the love I had culled in my heart.

D: But Amba, how could you forget the OATH? The oath that earned him the name–The Terrible? the oath that burned up all the young, budding thoughts of love even before they were thought of? The oath that burdened him with Life? Poor Pithamaha, he could not die because of his promise to Satyavati,–the comfort of Death was denied to him.

A: Do I not know it? But for that cursed oath, I could have been the beloved of Devavrata. He would have loved me. Yayati asked of his son, his Youth for a few years, but Santanu blighted for ever the life of his young son.

D: Yes, Pitamaha’s life has been one long tale laden with pain.

A: How can I forget his flashing eyes, which filled with tears as he lifted me up from the floor and murmured: ‘Another sacrifice on the altar of Dharma. Sister mine, were I not bound by my oath, things would have been different! He then breathed a long sigh.

D: If things had been different! If that child-mother, Kunti, had not disowned her first-born, Karna would have been the Suzerain.

A: They say Fate is a Woman: I think not. Surely, a woman would not have wrought so much havoc in the lives of those two noble youths!

I had so much to give, and he would not, he could not accept me. Bound by the cruel shackles he had imposed on himself, Devavrata could not realize himself; he loved me, but knew it not.

D: Did he, then, love you?

A: Love me? Were it not love, would he have fought with his Guru as did? He would not let even the thought of love enter his heart. Know you not that, to the Pauravas, Honour is greater than life itself; When he fought with Parasurama, Bheeshma fought with himself, his other self; and when he won, I knew that I had lost.

D: How great must have been his anguish!

A: Indeed, it was. Only merciful Death, I knew, would release him from this bondage. So I prayed.

D: Devi Durga granted you your boon.

A: Yes. I was born as Shikhandin. My Lord was watching me all along. He knew. Even like me, he was waiting for the inevitable end; it meant freedom from this earthly bondage.

D: Now, I remember. On the night before the fall of the great Pitamaha, Krishna took me to his tent. I prostrated myself before him and took the dust of his feet. He blessed me: I wept tears of anguish and said, ‘My Lord, you have entered the battle-field like a forest-fire athirst. How can we escape your fury?’ He smiled a wan, tired smile, as if to say, ‘It is all over, my child. The long day’s march is done and my limbs ache.’ My husbands then entered. With the seven of us sitting at his feet, he recounted to us his youth and your tragic tale. He then said that you would face him on the morrow, and that on looking at you his arms would fall to his sides, listless, powerless. Now, now I realize what he must have meant. How could he have helped this numbness!

A: He saw me. Amba whose love he had refused to accept; Amba who had so much love for him that she, and only she, would grant him Moksha, freedom from this vale of tears. He knew my love for him. I killed him to give him life. Even as Krishna made Karna’s death–Dying into life. Why, there are tears in your eyes, Panchali!

D: Kama, poor ill-starred Prince; one even like your Devavrata. His life was blighted too.

A: A mother’s doing.

D: Amba, how could she have been so unmotherly. Radheya………when I think of my pride and hauteur at which he must have been touched to the quick.

A: Your hauteur? You insulted but Suyodhana!

D: No. You do not know. On the day of my Svayamvara, when Karna was bending the bow, I ruined his aim by announcing that I refused to allow a Soothaputra to compete. Was it not cruel?

A: But tell me, Panchali, did you not love Arjuna more than the others?

D: How could I love them all alike? My father wanted a daughter, because he admired Arjuna’s archery; I was to be the gift of Drupada to the mightiest of archers. I WAS MEANT FOR ARJUNA, even as the lotus blooms only for the Sun. But Kunti Devi spoke rashly, and her sons would not disobey. I loved Arjuna. A sixth sense told me that, in spite of the episode of the house made of lac, my Lord would come to me on the day of my Svayamvara. My left eye throbbed when I entered the great hall; Krishna smiled at me, and I knew that I would find my heart’s beloved.

A: They say you loved Karna too. You smile; then, did you?

D: I must have; I do not know. Trying to remember is like chasing the elusive lamp of Memory. Its light is too far away. But at this distance of time, I remember the day when we had unwittingly plucked the Amla fruit. Krishna made me say that I loved Karna.

A: Were you happy when you were on the earth, Draupadi? To me, the Earth was full of pain till that one moment when Gangeya was set free from his human bondage. But you, the favoured Queen of the five great warriors, you must have been very happy.

D: Happy? Indeed, I know not what Happiness is. My life has been one long wreath of failures strung together on the thread of Pain.

A: I do not understand.

D: Was not my marriage itself a failure? How could I, born of fire, made of fire, how could I be happy with peace-loving Yudhishtira? I was restless. I was discontented. Only Bheema could look into that seething volcano–my heart. Only his pulse would quicken in response to the restless rumblings in my heart. But I loved him not. Nakula and Sahadeva were but moments in my life. Arjuna–he was my heart’s dearest. But he loved Subhadra. You know about the Rajasooya?

A: I do. You laughed. Why did you laugh?

D: Because it was natural to me. Why does the flower smell so sweet? Why do these things happen? Why did Seeta want the fawn? It was natural to her. I laughed because I saw Suyodhana fall. Believe me. I laughed since it came naturally to me. But that laugh loaded the dice against us.

In the great Hall of Dhritarashtra, when Suyodhana and his brother, Dussasana, insulted me as no woman has been insulted, there was no justice to be found. My husbands stripped of their arms, my Lord Arjuna without his Gandeeva,–they were even more shamefully treated than I was. A Kshatriya without his bow, and alive too! And yet, even after Suyodhana said: ‘Right or no right, I would not have allowed even a slave from the Harem of Bhanumati to be treated thus’, they stood, all five of them, their eyes beseeching mother Earth to forgive them their unmanliness. Amba, was that not Failure?…My heart broke. From my eyes rained, NOT TEARS, but contempt, horror, loathing, hatred, of the men, the ‘Heroes’ assembled there. My burning look I cast on the Kuru House, and it was burnt to ashes even then. The war which came later was just make-believe. They were already doomed; the thirteen years that intervened were just drops of fire in my endless rosary of hatred.

A: Strange to say, it was Bheema, and not Arjuna, bound up your flowing tresses.

D: Yes, dear Bheemasena! He was ever the noble, gallant and chivalrous husband. To him I owe the only happy moment of my life. When he dipped his hands in that hated blood and bound up my hair, I was blissfully happy. He would always address my hair as ‘The Rahu that eclipsed the Kuru Chandra.’

A: How did it all end?

D: End? I suppose it ended as Krishna wanted it to end. Krishna, Satyaki, and the six of us–only we were left. Nothing was worth living for. Nothing. My children were gone, and the revenge for which I lived all those years, even that joy turned to ashes in my mouth.

I suppose Krishna is happy. He had kept his promise. He had spared the Pandavas. But, Amba, he did not save me. When my little ones died, I died too. He made me live. He would not grant me the Death that would have set me free.

Amba, to you, the end of the war meant everything. It held all that you craved for, in life. But to me, it was the end of everything. Kuru Rajyalakshmi had showered all her smiles and favours on Suyodhana. When the Pandavas paid her their homage, it was too late. Her hands were empty.

Nothing, nothing seemed worth living for: What a mockery it had been from the start to the end. And all the while, Krishna was looking on with that sweet, mocking, provoking smile.

What made him play such a gruesome game with us as Pawns? Can no one tell me the WHY of it?