Saindhava's Death

SAINDHAVA’S DEATH

(‘Saindhava’ or the Sindhu King was Jayadratha, son of Vriddhakshatra. Jayadratha played a crucial role in encompassing the brutal killing of Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s son. Arjuna therefore vowed he would kill Jayadratha before the next nightfall. At the end of a day of fluctuating fortunes, Jayadratha’s severed head, fell on Vriddhakshatra’s lap as he was sitting in tapas. When he got up, the lifeless head fell on the ground, and Vriddhakshatra’s head burst into fragments fulfilling his own curse.

The chief figures in the Mahabharata are like apocalyptic visions, and the old tragedies are being enacted over and over again. The great epic is still the subject of discourses in our Temple Halls, and attracts numerous listeners day after day.)

What sudden spite impelled you
To circumscribe the Pandava Prince?
Didn’t you know that your own death
Began with your earliest breath?
Even today aeons later
Your death seems the climactic moment
In Bharat’s ancient tale of carnage.
Old men and old women sit awhile
Mute and motionless in the Hall
Witnessing your death again
And the fruition of your father’s curse.

Waiting patiently for death by ripeness.
The old sadly re-enact your bloody end.

Vriddhakshatra, fondest of fathers,
Ordained your future Enemy’s death.
What price the pride of power?
Your great adversary Arjuna’s head,
Did it burst into a thousand shreds?
The curse of the hidden avenger,
Does it rebound from or reach the goal?

And yet and yet–in a way sinister,
Vriddhakshatra’s curse came true.

Arjuna’s heart smithereened
A day before Jayadratha’s head
Ablaze with its goried locks
Caused Vriddhakshatra’s head
To boomerang in blood.

Where did all this lead to–
This plus and minus
Followed by many an excruciating
Minus and plus?

Could Bhurisravas and Salya,
Kambhoja, Vrishasena and Purumitra,
Vivimsati, Jaya and Sakuni
Help you, valorous Jayadratha?
What price your murky dance
On Abhimanyu’s stained bright body?

Nor yet could great Satyaki,
Bhima and Dhrishtadhyumna
Save Subhadra’s valiant son.
Blood spilled more blood and blood,
For the first spurt had gushed
Signalled by a hated curse.

Woman’s blood steadily pools
To fill a glorious birth,
But man’s spread of vermilion stain
Records only the blight of day.

Mighty Jayadratha drawn to war
Paid a double price falling dead
On his self-absorbed father’s lap.
Life zig-zags a caterpillar curve
Of beginnings and endings without end.

Could it all have been avoided–
Could it be avoided still?
Those million deaths around the world–
The push-button megadeaths to come!

The vanished cottages
The burning cities
Scorched earth, rape, rapine:
Words, words, words,
Weeds, weeds, weeds,
Wormwood, wormwood:
Cunning and camouflage
Rage and ruthless spite
Rain blood and tears.
Self-driven self-deluded
Rode doomed Jayadratha:
Death came to him
And he carried death.

The grass is not greener today
Nor blood redder nor passion fiercer.
Jayadrathas still stalk the land
Hemming in innocent children
In examination or extermination camps.
Vriddhakshatras mutter their curses
A million times over.
Injured Arjunas seek immitigable vengeance
For dear blood shed by the tiger-clawed clan.
And Counsellors are not lacking,
And the courses of curses may be diverted,
And the biter may be bit and the killer killed,
And flawed red wine flows on in a flood.

Are we doomed in this haunted nightmare world
To spin round this circuit chain-reaction?
And fabled spectral Kurukshetra
Many times lives and dies again
In this hoary Land of Dharma
This seagreen expanse of terror and pain
Playing roles of fatality.
No way to live or love or make good
But kill kill kill with the concealed bomb
Or dart a poisoned arrow
Or crush with the yard pestle
Or beat with a rusted pipe
Or give a thug’s infernal hug.

Is there no way out of this wheel of hate?
Is there no cure for jealous rage?
Is there no answer to kill kill kill?

Shall we not somehow outgrow fear?
Shall we not learn the lesson of love?
Shall we not invoke the grace of Grace?

Is death in Padmavyuha,
East Pakistan, Cambodia,
Bhivandi, Sharpville,
On the Israel-Lebanese frontier,
Or right on the road to HEC–
Is cold-blooded brutality or genocide
The only and final answer?

Helpless like Yudhishtiras
The old men and old women
Await the outcome in the Temple Hall
Listening to the Pundit retailing
The tale of Vriddhakshatra’s curse,
Jayadratha’s calculated encirclement
Of the wonder-lad Abhimanyu,
His untimely end, his father’s grief,
The anodyne and the terrible oath,
And the cornering and slaying of Jayadratha,
And the self-doom of Vriddhakshatra.

Are we to be caught forever thus
Between a saintly Saindhava’s curse
And a heroic Saindhava’s spite?
Is there no end to this night?