SHAKESPEARE --- HAMLET’S ADVICE TO THE ACTORS --- Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.



CRYING
FOR
KURUKSHETRA

AFTER KURUKSHETRA
A PLAY IN ONE ACT

BY

SURYAKANTHI TRIPATHI

 

INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAY

The play, Crying for Kurukshetra, is about women and war. It addresses the impact that war has on the lives of women and their struggle to come to terms with itsaftermath. The theme is highlighted through the experiences of women, both royal and common, who suffer devastating losses in Kurukshetra, the great battle of the Indian epic “The Mahabharata”. It is seen that the issues that confronted those women have remarkable contemporary relevance, and are strikingly similar to those that challenge the women of today.

The setting of the play is the city of Hastinapur just after the end of the great Kurukshetra War between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The funeral rites of the thousands of slain have taken place. Gandhari and Kunti, the mothers of the Kauravas and the Pandavas respectively, overcome by the tragedy and the futility of the war, are thinking of leaving the palace and retiring to the forest along with Gandhari's blind husband, Dhritarashtra. Panchali is equally grief-stricken, but as the wife of the Pandavas, is now the queen of Hastinapur, and cannot leave. Panchali, from among the three, in whom at the moment this sense of duty to Hastinapur is the greatest, instils it in the older queens, Kunti and Gandhari. She persuades the older women not to abandon her.

The play is about women, particularly these three women, Gandhari, Kunti and Panchali, who has each suffered great personal loss in Kurukshetra. It is about their grief and their guilt, and their individual struggle to come to terms with these feelings.

All three have lost sons in the war. Panchali and Gandhari have lost all their sons. Kunti has lost one, but one whom she had failed to recognise virtually till the end of his life. Both Kunti and Gandhari have also lost all their grandsons. Panchali’s brother and father have also been killed in Kurukshetra. There is not one left in the next generation, with all the sons of all the Pandavas and all the Kauravas having been wiped out. The grief of the three is intense, extreme.

Nevertheless, the three royal women had been in positions of power, a power they did not use or did not know how to use. Their guilt, therefore, is all their own, and made even greater since the tragedy of the others is also partly owing to their own failure.

The three women, after going through a phase of accusation and even justification, realise that have much in common. Their individual grief eventually blurs the identity of one from the other, and of the three women from the hundreds of other women who, as survivors, suffered the ultimate tragedy of the war. The two maids in the room, Sevika and Kinkari, represent these women of Hastinapur, and eventually everyone is talking the same language.


CHARACTERS

Gandhari:  Wife of Dhritarashtra, and the mother of a hundred sons, the Kauravas.

Kunti:  Widow of Pandu, the younger brother of Dhritarashtra, and mother of Karna and the five Pandava brothers.

Panchali:   The princess of Panchal, she is the daughter-in-law of Kunti, and the wife of the five Pandavas.

Sevika and Kinkari:  Two maids who attend on Gandhari. They have also lost their close relatives in the Kurukshetra War. Sevika is the older woman who has lost her son and brother. Kinkari is a young girl, widowed by Kurukshetra.

CHARACTERS REFERRED TO IN THE PLAY

Krishna:    In The Questioning Chorus, at the beginning of the play, Krishna, who recited The Bhagavad Gita (The Song Celestial), to Partha, one of Kunti’s sons, is asked why he did not prevent Kurukshetra.

Ganga:  The great river on whose banks the Kurukshetra was fought.

Dhritarashtra:  The blind king of Hastinapur, the husband of Gandhari, and the father of the Kauravas. A weak man and an over-fond father, who often gave in to the unjustified demands of hiseldest son, Duryodhan, his vacillation and lack of moral conviction is a cause for Hastinapur being dragged into war.

Karna:  The eldest son of Kunti. Kunti abandons him as an infant because she gives birth to him when yetunmarried. Karna, a great warrior, was befriended by Duryodhan on whose side he fights the Kurukshetra War, pitted against his own brothers, the Pandavas.

Yuddhistira:  The eldest of the five Pandava brothers.

Duryodhan:  The eldest of the hundred Kaurava brothers, he was desperate to prevent his cousins, the Pandavas, from ruling Hastinapur. He uses his father's fondness for him to continuously plot against them. He is a main instigator of the war.

Sakuni:   The brother of Gandhari, the king of Gandhar. He, however, lived in Hastinapur, and being the maternal uncle of Duryodhan becomes the latter's mentor. A man of crooked genius, he helps conceive and execute all the wicked schemes with Duryodhan.

Aswatthaman:  Close to the Kauravas, he is unable to bear the unjust killing of his father, and the defeat of his friend, Duryodhan, in the war. In a mad rage, he kills the sleeping brother and sons of Panchali in a midnight raid on the Pandava camp on the last day of the war.

THE QUESTIONING CHORUS

What is this great story you know,
Of old times not so long ago?
Of kings and their old enmity,
Of Krishna, of war and victory?
 
We’ll tell you the fearful saga,
Of the carnage of Kurukshetra,
It’sa war that warrants telling,
It vanquished all, dead and living!
It raged ages ago, only today!
It was just then, just yesterday!
So,we can recount it once more,
Here, then hereafter, now as before!
History was in Kurukshetra,
Along the banks of the Ganga.
History was then, and is ever,
The red swelling of a river.
 
When those fatal weapons flashed,
Marching men crushed crop and field,
As war, it clamoured for the dead,
Krishna, what was it Krishna said?
 
Against war, its dark conclusion,
Krishna pleaded, pleaded with passion.
“Give up a part to spare the whole,
Seek peace and plenty as your goal!”
To Kuru’s kings, Krishna was clear,
“Give up this bloody, barren desire,
Peace is courage, braver than enmity,
While war will waste home and country!”
But the Kurus, they scorned all caution.
For them war was manly compulsion,
For women, it was failure or intent,
But it was silent, shameful, consent.
 
Tell us then, tell us all about it.
Who did war enlist, who sought it?
Who fought the war, who feared it?
Did sense speak, did unease resist?
 
He was deaf to all advice, Duryodhan,
He gave up virtue, cast off reason,
Trapped in his mind, his cell of spite,
He defiled earth, he denied right.
On one side were the five Pandavs,
Across,were the hundred Kauravas.
As foes and friends joined each side,
The land feared the dreaded divide.
But Partha in the reckless massing
Saw only death do the conquering.
He saw sons, uncles, his tutors slain,
Laid down arms, said war was in vain.
 
When Kunti’s son he so dreaded
The killing of his kin and friend,
Flinched from the fratricide ahead,
What was it then that Krishna said?
 
You be instructed, Partha, said he,
In lawful war lies your duty!
Act and find your identity!
Seek to be free, Son of Kunti!
Do not attach to expectation,
In action, lodge your attention!
I, Krishna, am driving your chariot.
So in me, Partha, place your trust!
Freed from action you cannot be
Since life in such state cannot be.
Do your duty, for then you do right.
Brace yourself, prince, rise and fight!
 
Is that what Krishna said, Krishna?
Did he opt for Kurukshetra?
Push Partha to violent action
War rather than renunciation?
 
Kurukshetra is the current,
Then to now, always the present.
Rising, and falling, and rising,
Ever alive, being and becoming.
On this stretch of duty, Kurukshetra,
It is right that you fight, O Partha!
Heedless of result, free from passion,
Rise to devotion, prince, rise to action!
By restraint, Partha, such discipline,
Of action and renunciation be sovereign.
Your mind is in battle, in great unease,
Action is the answer, will bring ease!
 
How fared the shining regiments?
Proud chariots, the war elephants?
When weapons rested with drying red
Who lingered alive, who departed?
 
Everyday till dusk they slaughtered
Then weary, the warriors they fled,
From Kurukshetra, its fire and darkness,
Its smell, its screams, its madness!
The wounded, lonely as they bled,
Longed for life, and gasped for death.
Cruel days were they of blade and metal,
Brutal days when many million fell.
As the pitiless plains bore the dead,
Mutilated,their sides split red,
Trod and trampled by the elephants,
Silent and empty grew the tents.
 
Eighteen days of battle ended,
Conflict which men a lifetime fed.
Ganga’s banks, did they grow silent,
Ready to echo the women’s lament?
 
They ran on to the still vastness
Wailing soon a common chorus
Here’s my brother, here my husband!
There your son, Oh! here my child!
Strange, on the field bearing the dead
You could not, could not tell, it’s said,
A woman, from which side she came,
                    Without armour, all looking the same!                     
Krishna wrong, wrong perhaps they were,
But you did not tame their slaughter!
We curse you, Krishna, you failed us!
We curse you, even as you console us!
 
On the plains of Kurukshetra,
The burdened banks of the Ganga,
When countless, nameless lay dead,
What was it then that Krishna said?

 

He who is born is also bound to die,
Such is the order that none can defy.
This your fleeting form life must shed
Yet life lives, for life cannot be dead!
It is not altered, life is the spirit,
It is not slain, it is endless, infinite!
Know then of life’s end and essence
And do not grieve its seeming absence!
He spoke of deep and secret things,
Of the source from which all springs,
Believe in me, Krishna said, only in me,
And fathom your own immortality!
 
At last when the war was done, over,
And pyres lit the banks of the river,
And women wailed for Kurukshetra,
What did she say, the mighty Ganga?
 
It is your war, within and out,
Krishna the hope, Partha the doubt.
It is dying, dying and yet living,
It is losing, losing and yet giving.
This then is the narration of Ganga,
Of war and wisdom, of belief in Krishna!
Of truth and time, action and dharma,
For you and me, always Kurukshetra!
They say Ganga will always whisper
This epic chant to all who will hear.
History was then and is ever,
The great swelling of the river.

*********************

 

 

CRYING FOR KURUKSHETRA

 

(Kunti enters the quarters of Gandhari. There are two women-in-waiting, Sevika and Kinkari, also in the room, and keep moving about and serving the three royal women. However, when these two speak to each other, the other three cannot hear them. The queens also seem not to see them and talk in their presence as if they were not there.)

 

Kunti: (Entering the room where Gandhari is sitting lost and forlorn)
Gandhari . . .
 
Gandhari: Happy to hear the voice of Kunti)
Come in. Come in, Kunti!
 
Kunti:  (As if conveying some fresh news)
Gandhari, our sons,
They have finished their war.
 
Gandhari: Yes. Their war is over.
It was a long one, Kunti!
 
Kunti: They have been fighting,
Fighting since childhood!
 
Gandhari: And we spent our lives
Doing little
But pulling them apart.
 
Kunti: Little is now left for us.
Our act is over, Gandhari!
(Looking up at Panchali who enters)
Come in, Panchali, join us.
I came here
Because I longed too
For the solace of Gandhari.
I was restless and alone.    
                  
Panchali: (Uncertain in her movements and speech)
There is no peace
Even after the war.
I am shaken, unsettled.
I do not know what to do
To abate my anguish.
And my spirit is all too unquiet
For what I know I must do.
 
Kunti: We have all seen
A black figure
With bloodshot eyes,
And crimson garlands,
Dancing,
Whirling in the terrible theatre
Of Kurukshetra!
That vision, Panchali
Has robbed us all
Of sleep and calm.
 
Gandhari:  (Signalling to Panchali, comforting)
Come and sit here, Panchali.
 
(Panchali sits down next to Gandhari)
 
Sevika: Yes! Sit there, Panchali!
Princess, queen and woman!
We women must sit together now.
For so we did,
In the camp of chill anxiety
Before the war.
 
Kinkari: We must remain
Now, after the war, as before,
In breaking sorrow, together.
 
Panchali: The pain of this war,
As abiding residue, will prevail
A dark flank to our existence
War will exact its penitence.
 
Kunti: Outside, it is done.
But with us, the war
Will lodge, and will last
To the limit of our lives.
 
Panchali: Perhaps we will find,
We must find
Quiet in our own end,
In our own time and fire.
 
Kunti: (Wistfully)
The dead in battle
Are fortunate.
They clash and depart.
They do not fight
This second and long battle.
 
Gandhari: (Calm, in a strangely forced fashion)
My sons, a hundred of them,
Defamed in their own days
Are dead.
 
(She forces herself to sound relieved)
My sons are fortunate
For they have parted
From life.
At last, as a mother,
I am relieved.
My sons, the Kauravas are free!
For they have also shed
The weight of corrupt desires
That they let malign their lives.
 
Kunti: (Out of a sad, futile curiosity)
Gandhari,
Did you not want to see your sons?
Never?
Even as they lay dying?
Even when they were dead?
This wilful blindness of yours,
Does it lessen your grief
By robbing one sense of its memory?
 
Gandhari: I do not know, Kunti
That it is possible
To grieve more than I do.
Even now, even without vision,
There can be delusion
Delusion that promises relief from reality.
Delusion rocking me into soft sedation.
 
Kunti: (Continues, engrossed in herself, very distraught)
Perhaps ---
Perhaps, if I had not seen him,
Karna, my first child.
Had never seen him
Grown and worthy,
Never, after I, in cowardice
Abandoned him as an infant,
This late and fruitless anguish,
I might better endure.
 
Sevika: She chose to lose Karna,
Before Karna was lost to Kurukshetra.
 
Kinkari: (Angry and affronted)
Then why does she wail now?
Kurukshetra has given her little claim
To anguish of her own.
She lost no husband in the war!
And her sons are well and kings!
She mocks us, Sevika,
By sharing our company. 
 
Sevika: But Kinkari,
Why don’t you cry, Kinkari?
You have enough claim on grief!
 
(Kinkari remains angrily silent)
 
Gandhari: (Trapped in her own grief, continues slowly)
They are gone now,
They have all left.
I feel their presence fading.
I fear I can no longer summon them
In my mind with ease.
Their voices, their touch
Are only my memories.
 
(With some assertion)
But I will not release memory
It is all that is left me!
 
Sevika: The funeral pyre of a child
Burns all our substance.
But it leaves behind recall,
Lingering recall,
To us, who will still linger.
 
Kunti: The past will linger
Into our future
Struggling as barren, neutered memory.
 
Kinkari: When the shining regiments are gone,
And when the proud chariots,
The war elephants move no more?
When the weapons are resting
In their dried red,
Have they also departed,
Who linger alive?
 
Kunti: Seen wounds are deadly,
Those unseen are worse.
When the weapons are quiet,
Then the women linger,
Then we women wail,
Wounded and undying!
 
Sevika: The kings scorned all caution.
War to them seemed a manly compulsion,
For Pandavas and Kauravas
Their fever and their ferment.
 
Kinkari: What was it for these queens?
 
Sevika: For women, it was failure or intent,
But whatever it was,
It was silent, shameful, consent.
 
Kinkari: Three women after the war,
And two more,
And some hundred million more,
All women in the wailing vastness
For they remained silent,
When the men spoke!
 
Sevika: For women remained silent,
When the weapons spoke!
 
Gandhari: Seen sons are merciless,
The unseen are worse.
Kunti, we have lost our past.
Nothing remains, Kunti,
Of the house of our affections,
For our children
Have travelled further
Into their future.
They have travelled into their own.
 
Sevika:  he past is ever useless,
Leaves nothing but ashes.
And we,
We have pawned our future too!
It is void, has nothing left,
Except the weight of woe,
Of ceaseless, timeless torment.
 
Panchali: Cursed is the generation,
That sees the death of its children!
 
Kunti: Worse is the curse
When women seeing death
Beckoning their sons,
Have let death make its call
In inaction and cowardice.
 
Kinkari: (Scornful of the royal women)
Memory tarries and feeds.
It is the twin of ravenous time,
Both mirthful,
In chastening those
Who did not fuse
Action with understanding.
 
Panchali: The lessons of grief
Come only with it.
We are not tutored
In advance.
That we may be cushioned
With greater fortitude.
 
Kunti: Nor instructed
With greater insight
To spurn the path
Which leads to pain.
 
Sevika:  I have waited on them
These many years.
I have seen them
Instructed by impulse and indulgence,
By fear, by fondness and revenge
But no, not by insight!
                  
Kinkari: War and death 
Are a concert together,
A laughing couple.
You cannot invite one
And not receive the other.
 
Gandhari: My tears poured
When there was prospect.
Now my eyes are parched,
When hope has forsaken.
Desolation remains,
Nothing left to console me.
 
Panchali:  I too have little left.
Since I know as well
The passing of all sons.
 
Kunti: Gandhari, Panchali,
I am more fortunate
I have sons, five sons left!
But I weep for the lost one,
I weep for Karna,
The son of my abandon.
Where then is solace?
These weak tears
Cannot wash my guilt
But they can water my grief.
 
Sevika: We women are in the same camp,
For we, unforced, made children
Our purpose for living.
The motive of our own valuation.
And so, we have now
No account for consolation.
 
Gandhari: (Talking to Kunti)
My hundred sons,
They were as infants,
A hundred occasions for affection.
 
(Kunti nods in agreement.)
My hundred sons,
How soon they became
The cause of anxiety and alarm.
I never kept from you, Kunti,
My ceaseless worry.
I wonder now, alone,
At how soon they have become, Kunti
One, the other, and the other,
My century for intense recall.
 
Sevika: We waited also, every night,
To ensure that our sons were dead.
Seeking report of their survival
Was selfish sacrilege!
Was not it settled for us?
Had not our own kings resolved?
That our fertile plains
Would offer death a good crop?
A bountiful, un-seasonal yield?
 
Kinkari: Yes! We’ve kept, sister,
The pact of our kings!
We have delivered death
The rich and promised harvest!
I have given my husband
And my children, yet unborn!
 
Sevika: Your grief is great, Kinkari
And yet you do not cry!
 
Kinkari: (With stubborn obstinacy)
Kurukshetra has taken mine.
But if I mourn,
I pay collective tribute to it.
For my tears are not pooled
With theirs,
Those that caused Kurukshetra!
(She points contemptuously to the three royal women)
 
Sevika: (Very slowly)
No Kinkari,
With theirs
That did not prevent it!
 
Panchali: Your grief is great,
Mother of Duryodhan,
He who caused Kurukshetra!
But was it not predicted?
By the plotting
And the years of perfidy
Of your brother,
The treacherous Sakuni?
 
Sevika:  King of that Gandhar,
That distant, deceitful land,
Who stayed on in ours,
Who sowed such, such sorrow in ours!
 
Panchali: The treacherous Sakuni,
King of that Gandhar,
That distant, deceitful land,
Who stayed on in ours,
Who sowed such, such sorrow in ours!
Was your grief not foretold
Sister of Sakuni?
By your unreasoning, unruly son,
Who destroyed Hastinapur
In surrendering to Gandhar
 
Sevika: (In deep distress)
 I lost my brother and son,
 For the ambition
Of her brother and son!
 
 Kinkari: Do not grieve so, Sevika!
They have greater cause for crying
That caused the greater calamity!
 
Kunti: Even if you be right,
Knowing the origin of sorrow
Does not diminish it, Panchali.
 
Panchali: But can increase it, certainly.
My children, all my sons,
All murdered in their sleep!
In one red rush of rage
By a demented man, this Aswatthaman
In a night of heinous assault?
So that he could deliver a report 
The dying Duryodhan desired?
 
(Turning to Gandhari)
Surely, your pain must increase,
Knowing your son has caused
So much death ..........
Even to a mother,
The loss of such a son
Must be awash with relief.
 
Kunti: Do not belittle Gandhari's grief,
Panchali, it is no less than yours.
Her loss is indeed the greatest
Gandhari has lost a hundred sons
In this war.
She has lost a hundred sons,
To a war they lost.
 
Sevika: Hastinapur lost all its sons,
To a war it did not summon,
It did not want!
 
Panchali: (Obstinate)
Duryodhan does not deserve grieving,
Even by a mother.
Duryodhan, he designed death ---
Even when he lay
Wounded and bleeding.
By him was the murder of innocents.
In him, to life you did not give birth.
You gave birth to terrible death itself!
 
Kunti: (Sternly)
Panchali, stop!
Do not dishonour her dead,
Add to the snarl of her thought
By such heartless abuse of her first-born.
We have each,
And to our own measure,
Made our grant
To this wasteland of guilt!
So let none of us here
Be unkind to the dead.
 
Panchali: (With great vehemence)
I am not talking ill of the dead.
I am just marking
That Death is dead.
He killed everyone,
And then, then he died!
 
Kinkari: Is death dead then?
Really dead?
 
Sevika:  He must be.
Didn’t she say so?
 
Kinkari: Yes, she did!
 
Sevika: Then why do you ask?
When has royalty been wrong?
When have we ever questioned
What our rulers said?
(Sevika pauses for a long moment, and continues)
If death, by kings, is done,
Then it can be done
The crying for Kurukshetra!
 
Gandhari:  As mother, Panchali,
I cannot discard my son.
But I agree,
The future can never attempt,
Never inspire,
Destruction compared to this,
Our present horror.
 
Sevika:  Do you believe that Death
Can hope for an afterlife
After it has shown
Such loathing for life
In Kurukshetra?

 

Panchali: And my only brother,
One triumphant general of them all!
Also slain in his sleep by Aswatthaman,
By the same sneak assassin
Of the deep and cowardly night.
 
Gandhari: (Showing some spirit)
Why then did you not avenge the killing
Of your sons and your brother?
Was not Aswatthaman
Pursued and captured by your husbands?
Was he not in their control?
 
Panchali: Yes, he was, I think he was.
(Pauses)
I did want him dead.
Dead! Dead!
 
(Continues, again after a pause,
and with considerable agitation)
But only at first.
For I cannot endure anymore
The horror of violent death,
Not even of the vile Aswatthaman!
 
(Sits down on the floor and breaks down)
I have seen my five sons
Unfeeling of their savage wounds,
Bodies cold to their own blood
In which they lay.
All killing is now
Like the carnage,
The slaughter,
Of my own children.
All blood seems to me
The blood of my sons!
 
Sevika: All blood seems to me
The blood of my sons!
 
Panchali: I cannot endure anymore
The horror of violent death.
Even if there can never be
Peer to the profanity
Of such young killings
As of my five sleeping boys.
 
Kunti: (Moves towards Panchali, strokes her and comforts her)
Calm yourself, Panchali!
For wrenching agitation,
We all have causE
But it may consume our balance.
You must not let it!
Therefore, Panchali,
Still yourself!
 
Gandhari: (Also shaken by Panchali’s sobbing)
Come and sit here, child.
 I need you beside me!
 
Kinkari: This is black misery
That will not abate.
Such butchery will plague
Sense and sanity.
 
Panchali: (Calming herself with an effort)
No, not one more violent end.
After the gory harvest
Of the fields of Kurukshetra.
 
Kunti: For his monstrous crimes
Aswatthaman is condemned,
Forlorn, restless, and diseased,
In his own foul reek and stench,
He is doomed to pace the earth
For thousands of years.
 
Sevika: Aswatthaman is doomed,
Among the destitute and the dead,
Himself, forever deserted by death!
 
Panchali: For crimes like his,
Hell will fear to admit him
Till he has first paid for them.
 
Sevika: They all grieve
One more than the other,
And in this competition
Seek to find
Their tolerance of grief.
 
Kinkari: (A little venomously)
No, not quite, Sevika.
It seems more that these queens
Crave this competition in their suffering.
 
Gandhari: Suffering craves no competition,
 Only some comforting, Panchali,
Some compassion.
 I cannot still admit
To myself, Panchali,
That my hundred sons are dead
 And not one, one left alive,
To remind me
That I was a mother once...
 
Panchali: (Turning to Gandhari, a little calmer now,
but yet unable to give up her accusation)
Grant me allowance
If I am uncharitable.
They, your children and mine,
And all of us,
Have paid for the acceptance,
For long enduring the crimes,
Cruel and unbound,
Of your brother and son.
Of your own blood, 
Of Sakuni, and of Duryodhan.
 
Kunti: (Admonishing Panchali)
Panchali, stop!
You must stop!
What drives your unceasing charge
Against Gandhari,
This unprotected woman?
I thought you noble!
 
Panchali: (Ashamed and abashed, speaks in a
tone of apology to Gandhari)
I demanded blood
The blood of your sons.
To wash their affront to me,
Their blood to wash my hair,
And cool my eyes.
It mattered not to me
That your hundred died in violence.
But seeing the blood of mine,
I can brave it no more.
What decree of destiny
Is this reckoning by blood, mother?
Of you and me?
From you to me?
Wrecking woman by woman?
 
Gandhari: The land is dyed in blood.
We are too, all of us.
Blood dances in our eyes, in our hearts
What will we do with more?
 
Kunti: What can we do with more?
Kurukshetra has killed
The Kauravas, your sons,
And my son Karna.
So are the sons of your sons,
And the sons of my sons dead.
We have bereft a young generation
Of their blood!
 
Gandhari: Is there a purpose in this,
Is there a purpose, Kunti,
In the end
Of all expectation from life?
 
(In a philosophical mood)
Hope is potent,
It flusters, troubles us.
The wise declare
That liberation from hope
Is great felicity.
Kunti, do you think
I am in that state now?
 
Kunti:  Gandhari, now and formerly
You have always been
The wisest of us all.
 
Sevika: Clear-sighted she is, Kinkari,
The noblest of them all!
 
Kinkari: Yes, that she is!
 
Gandhari: Wise only in your esteem, Kunti.
But I remain engrossed
In the whirl of myself.
I wish to be released from myself.
 
Sevika: She would be released
If she cast off affinity,
If she was truly detached,
From memory,
As she is from hope.
 
Kinkari: (With sudden wisdom and clarity that surprises Sevika)
She would be released
If she sought an answer
To her loss
In the future of Hastinapur.
 
(Sevika nods)  
 
Gandhari: (Suddenly bitter)
But perhaps Kurukshetra
Had a purpose!
Now the Pandavas can rule
A realm without rivals.
Consider the well being
Of their subjects
And themselves, unfettered,
Without debate or question,
Devise and determine that good.
 
Panchali: What?
Would you wish further conflict?
Has Hastinapur not borne long enough
The burden of strife
Within our family fold?
A country preyed upon
By cousins in conflict?
Is it not our season
To refund this land?
 
Sevika: And cursed is Kurukshetra
That shed people’s blood,
Rent the expanse of Hastinapur,
With our lament.
But is Hastinapur also to blame,
For letting the madness of its kings
 Destroy its people?
 
Kinkari: Only rulers can incite
Such deadly hostility.
Prepare such a spread for death!
 
Sevika:  Life must covet life,
Even of cousins and clans,
If it must protect its own.
 
Gandhari: No, Panchali,
I do not want further strife.
But I wish my sons also had
The occasion to author afresh
Their life’s account
For a few years
In a reign without discord.
I grieve
That Duryodhan and his brothers
Have no pardon
In the sight of posterity.       
 
Sevika: (In a tone of sarcasm)
And who will compose
An account of the people of Hastinapur?
Of your young husband’s life?
 
Kinkari: And of your son,
And of my sister’s son,
Now that they speak no more?
 
Sevika: Wars leave behind kings
In place of kings.
But others are left widows,
Orphans without means.
In this, may we, may Hastinapur, still
Find virtue and justice?
 
Kinkari: Can we still
Find virtue and justice
In loss of home and harvest?
 
Sevika: Can the people of Hastinapur
Find right and goodness
In being forgotten history?
 
Kinkari (Changing the tone of the exchange asks more critically)
But can the people of Hastinapur,
Can they claim right and goodness
Because they remained silent,
And watched when war was brewing?
 
Gandhari: (In a tragic finality of tone)
My son, Duryodhan,
Will remain forever
The most infamous of his race.
Kurukshetra has killed for him
All prospect of pardon!
 
Kunti: Kurukshetra has rendered us,
Living and dead,
Because of our faults
A sacrifice to time,
Now and into the future!
 
Panchali: (Again defiantly)
Yes, but why accuse Kurukshetra?
The arrows of war
Left their quivers
Over these many years.
What use is it
To lament a conflagration
That was stoked in this palace,
In this royal province,
In injustice, in dishonour
And deceit,
In rapacity and envy?
 
(Turning to Gandhari)
How did you suckle Duryodhan, mother?
Was it acid you fed him as an infant?
 
Sevika: All wars have their seeds
In failure of rulers and people,
In loss of courage and persuasion.
 
Panchali: Do not condemn those
Who react to insult and affront.
Do not seek
To contain that rebound
On the pretext of peace
Long discarded.
Do not blame those
Who rescued themselves,
Who wanted respite
From violation and outrage.
 
Gandhari: Is not this consuming war
The death of millions
Is it not too high?
Too high an outrage
For outrage avenged?
 
Panchali: I did not ask for war!
I did not ask for it!
War was bred in actions outside of me.
I sought only a blood toll
For the transgress
I suffered as woman.
A gross shaming
Not by brutal strangers
But by my own people.
I was wagered,
Wagered as a stake in a game
By my husband,
Your son.
(Pointing to Kunti)
 
And, (Pointing to Gandhari)
Disrobed by yours,
In the full and shameless gaze
Of an insolent assembly of court.
In this very same palace.
 
(All the other four women move towards her instinctively and replay the shaming of Panchali wagered into slavery by her husband in a game of dice, and then disrobed by the Kaurava princes in the court. It is as if by reliving Panchali’s shame they share her agony and also thus absolve themselves of those acts.)
(After some pause)
But I do not hold you two responsible
For it was not of your instruction.
Yet for doings done to me
How was I to affirm
My esteem, my dignity,
To myself?
Find finish for the public ignominy
Your sons administered me?
 
Kinkari:  How may the world abide
Without punishing the wicked?
 
Sevika: Let us not forget
Our whole world would be condemned
Had Duryodhan,immoderate
Resisting reason,
And beyond instruction,
Become our king.
 
Kinkari: But for one man
One reckless man,
One over-indulged son of a king!
Kurukshetra was a callous levy
Claimed from our people.
Does that dead prince
Now know?
Does he now care, Sevika,
For the wounds of Hastinapur?
 
Kunti: It was a time of shame, Panchali.
For the dishonour done to you,
Men have forfeit acquittal forever.
 
Gandhari: It is so, indeed so.
Profane, appalling deeds
Demanding redress.
But demolished armies,
Depleted kingdoms,
And orphaned millions,
Were they not over-pertinent
As sequence
To even the gravest indignity
To one by a few?
 
Kinkari: A million orphans
Is gravest indignity
A million times.
The heedless sacrifice
Of many by a few!
 
Sevika: This is a cheerless land.
A land for whose war
Neither the reason,
Nor the outcome,
Can be pardoned.
 
Panchali: For the extreme outrage
The barter and disgrace
Of my person
I did seek retribution.
 
Kinkari:  A woman must seek recompense
She must reply to her rage.
 
Panchali: A woman must seek recompense
She must reply to her rage.
Else it is betrayal of women
An invitation to their abasement
Worse than my own.
 
Sevika: Recompense?
At the cost of war?
At the cost of thousands of women?
Why don’t rulers
Reply to their rage,
Caused by their own,
Through their own?
 
Kinkari:  The queen was dishonoured
By the palace.
But Sevika,
Sevika, how can the palace punish itself?
So it killed my husband instead!
 
Gandhari: Panchali, of all the women,
You could have prevented war,
The killing of sons and husbands.
You could have vetoed war,
Despite the madness of my son,
And the vagaries of his father.
 
Sevika: They and all these other men,
Kings and angry princes,
Their tormented memories
Teeming with grievance
They contracted a war
That ours died for!
 
Kinkari: That my husband died for!
 
Gandhari: Impelled by their ire,
These men of base ambition,
They contracted a war
We did not stop.
We were infirm.
 
(After some reflection)
We were infirm, perhaps,
Only in our estimate.
Kurukshetra triumphed
With the collapse
Of our own persuasion.
 
Panchali: It is now convenient
To rate my influence
More than its reach.
Yet in this aggregate of causes,
These plots and these counter-plots,
Do not single mine
And cull it for censure.
For then, you do injury to me,
To yourself,
And condone the shaming of women.
Revenge is at times
A noble and natural claim!
 
Gandhari: Panchali, revenge is a natural claim.
But preventing war is noble, nobler!
Panchali, you had the power of persuasion,
You had the command of reason.
 
Sevika: You, Panchali, sacrificed wisdom.
You used your eloquence
For ancient, festering hatred!
 
Gandhari: You, Panchali, sacrificing wisdom
You became obsessed
Like my son, Duryodhan
And blind like my husband
So do not blame them alone.
 
(After a long pause)
Along with me, hence, Panchali,
Keep vigil
For many nights,
A thousand nights,
And a thousand more
Longing for sons
Who will not come back!
 
Kinkari: The guilt is for them
Who spoke the war,
The grief is for all.
 
Sevika:  After this darkening
Women may claim sleep someday.
But only they can
Who claim sorrow as we do,
In pure memory,
In unburdened memory.
 
Kinkari: Hastinapur saw the human family
Divided into warring clans
Into a carnage of earth itself.
We have to weave,
Now to mend
The remnants of our people
And our lives
For the aftertime of war.
For widows and wailing mothers,
For men returned without limbs.
 
Sevika: The future will remember kings.
But Kinkari,
The future is a sorry scribe.
It will not etch
In today's parchment.
Injury to the country,
And violence to our lives.
By our royals, our sovereigns!
 
Kinkari: History will not write
The record of the cleansing
By the people of Hastinapur.
 
(She adds with great scorn)
Sevika!
How even now, these rulers debate,
These queens contest and compare
The tallies
Only of their loss and liability!
We have no responsibility,
Nor lien of service, Sevika,
No longer to the likes of them!
Sevika! The earth is crimson-dyed.
Hastinapur awaits
The healing of rent wounds,
The weaving of torn minds,
For the young green
Must subdue this old red.
 
Kunti: Gandhari, you are virtue itself
None may deem you otherwise
And in your integrity
Is the final deliverance
Of your husband and sons.
 
Gandhari: Kunti,
Were not all these alliances
Sure outriders to suspicion
And rancour?
The marriage of your sons,
All five of them,
To the daughter of Panchal,
A kingdom
Of known hostility with Hastinapur?
 
Panchali: (Interrupting angrily to answer Gandhari)
 It is not Panchal or Panchali
That you must condemn.
The cause for Kurukshetra
Perhaps rests with many.
But accuse him, mother,
Accuse your brother,
Who put together the war.
Why did you permit your brother,
The vengeful Sakuni, to house here
In endless sojourn?
Knowing that he was enemy
To all compromise?
Did not his kingdom need him?
This ruler of Gandhar
More than we needed his wiles
And murderous plots?
 
Gandhari:  Panchali, every morning,
For eighteen days of this war,
Duryodhan came to me
Imploring my blessing for his victory.
And for the same eighteen days
I withheld him, my first born that blessing.
Chastising him, telling him,
There was victory
Where there was righteousness.
Hence Panchali,
Tell me not the sequence of virtue!
I grieve now for my son’s demise,
Even as I did these many years
For his desertion of good.
                  
(In an outburst of anger combined with regret)
Hence, Panchali!
Husband, father,
Son and brother,
We have let them all,
Their stamp and impression,
Their action to define
And fashion our life.
Tell me, Panchali,
Which one of us
Has broken free?
 
Kunti: Today, I understand
The impulse of my anxiety
Was not about the war,
Only about my sons.
Karna, my eldest, I sought 
Only on the eve of battle.
I went as a supplicant.
I was too late, too beggarly,
Wanting only to save his life
And of my other sons, to me precious.
 
Kinkari: The assault on the land,
And the people,
The primacy of peace,
They did not colour her concern.
 
Kunti: The assault on the land,
And the people,
The primacy of peace
They did not colour my concern.
 
Gandhari: Yes.
We have squandered
And ceded our choice
Often and again
To let a holocaust happen.
 
Kinkari: When rulers pamper family feuds
We grant them our land and harvest.
When sovereigns see virtue in war
We pay the wages,
Then we donate them,
Our breath and our blood.
 
Kunti: Gandhari! Panchali!
I concealed even to my other sons
Their brother in the rival camp.
Base and shameful secrecy!
I might else have all six of them now.
And you, Gandhari, your hundred
And you yours, Panchali,
All of us in Hastinapur,
And in the hundred other kingdoms
Our sons and grandsons alive.
 
Gandhari: Kunti!
I was weary of restraining
The men of my household
Sons and all.
Now it is me, again!
I need the endurance
For their ventures
Which visit me in outcome.
 
Kunti: The son I abandoned
As a new-born,
To conceal his birth
And never dared admit
Even to his own brothers
Till his death
My meagre affirmation of my son
Was remedied by yours, Gandhari!
It was your son, Duryodhan
That granted Karna
The esteem and affection
That I withheld him.
For that I remain in debt
To Duryodhan,
And, to you, his mother.
 
Gandhari: Kunti, the debt has been paid
By your son to mine
In unexampled constancy!
The one support my son had
In the heavy haze
Of his open disrepute
And denunciation.
 
(There is a long pause)
Your son, Karna,
In loyalty to mine,
Never did he waver.
He outdid me for mine.
Gave his life to Duryodhan,
One to whom I could not give
A mother’s blessing!
Be proud of Karna,
Be proud, Kunti,
Of your eldest son!
 
Kunti: And now both our first born are dead
Perhaps betrayed most by their mothers!      
                  
Gandhari: Yes, Kunti
We both let down our first-born.
You deserted yours
To an abandon
From his infancy to his end.
And I, I abdicated my son
To my husband,
To himself, his rage and rivalry
Forsaken forever by check and curb.
We failed them both, Kunti!
And we are to blame, hence
For this dire aftermath.
 
Kunti: My Karna is dead
 And, yes, so is my Karna’s son.
The causes are many.
 All cradled in our flaws and our fears.
But our frailty,
The frailty of queens,
We know now
Has a magnitude of consequence,
That storms and breaches our good
And that of our people.
 
Sevika:  Oh! This futile lament of queens!
They know now
That in rulers
Any frailty is flaw,
And weakness is a vice.
 
Kinkari: Their concealment invites shame,
And their failing welcomes sorrow.
 
Sevika: Their cowardice leads to repentance.
 
Kinkari: Their greed to guilt.
 
Sevika: And retribution to remorse.
 
Kinkari: What a list!
Sevika, you are good with words!
 
Sevika:  Women are always good with words!
 
Kinkari: We are really good with words!
 
Sevika: We could have used them
At the right moment!
 
Kinkari: We should have used our words
Before they made mourners of us all!
 
Sevika: Our station trained our silence,
It foiled our speech!
 
Kinkari: So we failed to stir our voices.
Failed to feed our claims
Into our words.
We did not declare,
Demand from rulers
The general good.
 
Sevika: We are all fools or flatterers,
Fawning cowards!
 
Kinkari: But now we know, sister!
That maids always know better,
So maids should never be tongue-tied.
 
Sevika: We choose to be tongue-tied,
And blindfolded
Like that sad queen there!
 
Gandhari: I chose to be blindfolded,
Not to be blind!
To be sensitive,
And to share and sense
My husband’s infirmity.
To scale what
Privation of sight
May mean to a man, an eldest son,
A prince who wished to be king!
A man of shortcoming,
Who could not, therefore, be king!
I was blindfolded, Panchali,
I was not blind!
 
Panchali: (In some awe and admiration, beyond her control)
You are unique, mother! 
Which woman would volunteer
A lifelong scarf over the eyes
To support a sightless husband?
But was not this blindfold
Your rejection of Hastinapur?
The revenge of Gandhar?
 
Kunti: (Everyone is puzzled, shocked and turns towards Panchali)
What are you prattling about, Panchali?
 
Sevika:  She came as a joyful girl,
This princess of Gandhar,
And found herself bound,
To a sightless,hopeless man!
 
Panchali: (Addressing Kunti and pointing to Gandhari)
She came as a joyful bride,
This princess of Gandhar,
And found herself bound,
To a sightless, derelict man.
 
Kinkari: So the princess, she declares,
Gandhari denies this Hastinapur,
I deny it my sight
As I do this husband
With no view, with no vision!
 
Sevika: And she granted Hastinapur
But one twisted view
That of Gandhar’s Sakuni!

 

Panchali: Mother, so this endless, knotted yard,
This sightless ribbon has wailed long
Of Gandhari’s speechless injury!
 
(She pauses, as Gandhari appears shaken, but turns to Kunti and continues relentlessly)
Gandhari denied Hastinapur’s prince,
Even her son, of maternal sight!
And so Duryodhan repaid the denial,
His mother unwanted, for a father
Who was of nature blind!
 
(Turns to Gandhari)
But, mother, this piece of cloth,
A mere physical blindfold,
Never deprived you of perception.
For you never did wear the fabric
Of your husband's mental deficit,
But only of material sight.
You could not in all imitate him
Limit yourself to his mind's confines.
 
Sevika: Then it would have been simple
Easy for Panchali
To denounce the two of them
Husband and wife!
 
Kinkari: As she does Gandhar’s son, Sakuni
Who led to her shame
Here in Hastinapur’s assembly!
 
Panchali: Then, it would have been easy
For me, Panchali,
Since victim I believe myself,
To denounce the two of you,
Wife and husband!
 
Kunti: Tangling with our own anguish
We are not thinking
Of further pangs we occasion
When we accuse each other
We forget we have left
Only ourselves to console us.
 
Sevika: There is a closed compass
For their dark disclosure,
The three may talk
To none but themselves.
For they can each
Interpret the speech,
And the silence,
Of the other two.
 
Gandhari: Yes.
Let us remain in patience,
In compassion with each other.
 
Kinkari: They cannot be
The three of them
As foe to foe.
For they have few,
Beyond their small assembly,
To fathom their agony.
 
Panchali: There are bounds
Of our liability!
But unfairly,
Not of our penalty!
We have to shake off
The onus of others,
The tariff of their acts 
Which ran out of halter.
 
Gandhari: I saw this coming
For years.
As my son grew headstrong,
His obstinacy fed
By the fond folly of his father.
 
Sevika: Her husband,
He was a man
With two natures
That warred one with the other.
A judicious ruler
And an injudicious father.
 
Kunti: I was, Gandhari,
A feeble woman,
In whom two natures battled.
My irresolute concern for Karna,
And my fear of common censure,
They became the extent of me
They annexed me, this Kunti,
And held me back even
From guiltless affection
For my other sons.
 
Gandhari: It took this drag of time
For the cataclysm to erupt.
Now, at last,
The waiting is done.
For that there is respite.
Need we now fear any worse?
 
Kunti: Yes. (Slowly, and after some introspection.)
Emptiness is relief.
Fear takes much room!
 
Gandhari: Kunti,
Memory invades too much too.
 
(But questioning again)
Still, I ask myself
Was it excessive, undue,
For life to have denied death
A single son of mine?
One of a hundred,
Just one?
For a woman,
Who so long withstood
The waiting for Kurukshetra.
You do know, Kunti,
You too, Panchali,
All my appeals to this family
Were spurned,
Scorned as the shrill carping
Of a woman
Of an incessant annoyance.
 
Kunti: Who can reproach you as mother?
And who can extol me as one?
Gandhari, do not suffer thus!
You have no reason
At all for self-censure.
 
Sevika: What do you do
To save a son from himself?
What do you do
When you lose control of him
And he loses himself?
 
Gandhari: The premonition of disaster
I have carried these many years
Fear was a dreary companion.
Now my heart is lightened
Even if I say so,
Amazed at myself.
 
(Turning to Panchali, and again a tinge more aggressive when talking to her)
You, Panchali,
Revenge was your companion.
Perhaps revenge is friendlier than fear.
 
(Back again to a sense of futility)
Now, for you and for me,
There is a closure, Panchali,
Of waiting for calamity.
Now we need help, Kunti,
To help cope
With unclosed anguish.
 
Panchali: There is great anger within me.
Is the call for rightful revenge
Only answered by another,
More grievous wrong?
Cannot one blaze be put out
Without another raging?
 
Sevika: Through violence,
To answer wrong,
Results in greater injury,
Wrong even to those who were not wrong.
 
Kinkari:  I learn from you, Sevika
And even from them!
The battle for right
Cannot be conducted through arms.
It leads to great wrong,
Even to those in the right.
 
Sevika: The greatest kings win victories
Without battles.
For a battle
Shears a people and a land
Like a crowd cleaving a forest.
 
Kinkari: This is philosophy!
I knew it!
Maids always know better,
So maids should never be tongue-tied.
 
Sevika: Then why don’t you go talk to them?
Tell them our wisdom?
 
Kinkari: Maybe, I will
Wait and see,
Perhaps, I will!
 
Gandhari: The men of my home,
Their doing stepped ahead,
And my undoing followed.
My efforts to prevent disaster,
Rode on their actions,
And thus were doomed.
The futility of their enterprise
Made a futility of my life
And ended it in blank gloom!
How do I conquer this failure?
Seal this great crater within me
Into which I keep falling?
 
Kinkari: For she is a noble woman!
A thinking woman!
It would have been good
For Hastinapur,
Had she ruled
And spared us
The sins of her progeny.
 
Kunti: Panchali is right.
In service,
The Pandavas will have to find
The redemption
For their share of wrongs
To clan and country.
So perhaps should it be with us,
Gandhari and Kunti!
 
Gandhari: And is this the price I pay?
What justice is this?
For the crimes of children
Pronounces so dire a punishment
On a mother
Who was not an accomplice?
Whose counsel none heeded?
And now my sons leave me
With a hundred widows!
 
Kinkari: Only a hundred widows?
Do they not hear us at all?
Do they not hear Hastinapur?
 
Sevika: They are so caught in themselves!
How they accuse each other, Kinkari,
And then comfort each other!
 
Panchali: Here is desolation
For us, yes.
Desolation, certainly,
For the losses are great.
But for those that remain
In Hastinapur?
Have we left them even hope?
Anticipation of a better rule,
Of harmony and well-being?
Of the compassion and support of kings,
Rather than the patronage of violence?
 
Sevika: Now Hastinapur holds the right
To the hereafter of Hastinapur.
 
Panchali: We can find a new beginning
If we purge our sins
In the hereafter of Hastinapur,
Beyond the fratricide
Of the past.
My father is dead.
My brother,
My sons are dead.
I will not let
This waste go waste.
Or else this victory
Of justice,
Will be vanquished in sorrow.
(With great firmness)
I will not let
The death of my sons be in vain.
 
Gandhari: Our sons and our husbands
When we think like them,
And like that thinking,
We lose the inheritance of right.
Then as queens we have left
The flawed inheritance by right,
This perilous royal birthright. 
 
Panchali: Yudhishtir, defeated by the death
Of so many, said,
I wish to leave this bloody land.
I, Panchali, have consoled him,
Told Yudhishtir,
No war is wholly just
But some have to be fought
For greater justice to prevail.
He said, I am spent after the war,
And weary with this victory.
I envy my cousins
Their parting from life.
But I, Panchali,
I have persuaded him
His loss can be compensated,
His remorse reduced
Only in his duty.
 
(Turning to the two older women, and in her strength of conviction)
For our grief is our own,
Our penitence should be our own.
We can shroud Hastinapur
No longer.
 
Gandhari: It is true,
Hastinapur has earned
In ultimate sacrifice,
Its reprieve from our demands.
 
Kunti: From our enveloping confines,
The narrow borders of our deeds,
Of our deceit and despair.
 
Panchali: Yes!
But there is beyond Kurukshetra
Even for us.
There is also our duty,
Our moral debit to this land
To now lessen the load
On its life and livelihood.
Kings cannot only cause ruin.
They have to mend and renew
Act for public purpose
For common advantage.
 
Kunti: Yudhishtir has beaten
The external enemy.
But his inner weakness
Tried to annex him,
Hold him from his office.
 
Kinkari: For the faults of a family
That they could not discipline.
The downfall is of them all
Victor and vanquished.
In Kurukshetra,
The champion and the beaten
Are both beaten,
And we with them.
 
 Sevika: For all of us have seen
The black figure
With bloodshot eyes,
And crimson garlands,
Dancing, whirling
In the terrible theatre
Of Kurukshetra.
 
 Panchali: Yudhishtir does concede,
 He does,
That victory can come
Only through loss.
But such terrible loss?
He cannot check his distress
Since the pangs of the victor,
As of the vanquished,
He knows are all his.  
 
Gandhari: Yudhishtir was mighty enough
To fight
And powerful enough to win.
So must he be resolute enough
To govern.
This malaise of will
Does not commend him.
He has duties to attend to.
And cannot leave Hastinapur.
 
Panchali: And, therefore, neither can I
For I have duties too
More than that of wife,
More than that of mother,
Even if I no longer am mother.
 
Sevika: For the earth was strewn
With bodies of others
Not of princes and kings alone.
 
Gandhari: I am happy at last
Panchali’s resolve
Will help heal Hastinapur.
We can leave in peace.
 
Panchali: (In great distress)
Is it true then
What they say?
That you plan to go away to the forest?
 
Gandhari: We have been talking about it, Panchali.
(She pauses and seems to want to touch something)
There is nothing left for me,
For us,
Here in Hastinapur.
 
Sevika: What is their plight?
This old mother
And her husband
Who have lost their all?
Their power,
Their will and capacity,
And all their sons?
 
Kunti: And I will go with them,
Gandhari and Dhritarashtra,
They are my generation, my kin.
 
Panchali: We suffer according to our action.
But I cannot forever
Continue to do wrong
By only bearing the burden of wrongdoing.
We have to become consoled in mind,
We have to connect ourselves,
To others
With kindness,
Wisdom, support and solace.
Do not go to the forest!
And leave me alone in this task!
We have need of your comforting,
All of us,
Here in Hastinapur!
 
Gandhari: Ours is neither the age
Nor the energy, Panchali,
For a new resolve.
 
Kinkari: Is this the energy of women?
Do they depart to the forest
Mindful only of own grief?
 
Panchali: Is this the energy of queens?
What clan is this
With its taste for war
But cannot face its outcome?
Yudhishtir wanted to leave
For the life of a recluse.
You want to leave too
For some forest!
 
(In blazing anger)
Why did you all not leave
When my sons were yet alive?
Admit this cowardice,
This drain of your blood,
Before it drained
The blood of my sons?
Now you wish to go
When obligation is greatest
To nation and people?
 
(No one replies to her)
 
Kinkari: (In youthful scorn)
What can they speak,
They that wish to flee?
 
Panchali: Go then, go.
 Both of you!
 I have endured enough
To outlast some more tragedy.
 Go, and leave me alone
Here in Hastinapur,
The capital of this state
Of bereavement.
 
Gandhari: You will not be alone, Panchali
Your husband is now the king
And you have duties as queen.
 
Panchali: Did you proclaim
Your departure to the forest
When war was brewing?
 
Gandhari: Unfortunately, no.
Not then, Panchali.
 
Panchali: Why?  Why not?
Such intent then might have
Imparted peace a faint promise.
Deprived Duryodhan
Of his father’s tacit sanction.
Perhaps calmed his ardour
For a wicked and rash enterprise
To find answers in deceit and combat
For the frustration
Of being the son of a king
Whose kingship was not ordained.
 
(Striding up and down, after a long pause, in a fresh challenge to Gandhari)
Was your duty to sons alone?
Duty despatched
When sons are gone?
 
Gandhari: We are old and tired,
But have to arrange afresh our lives
After the death of our children.
Now, Panchali,
What can we be
But as ascetics
In the retreat of the woods?
 
Panchali: The region of felicity
Is now not in the forest.
It is in this land of discord
Where effort has value.
 
(Changing her tone)
But I will not ask you again
Not to abandon me.
I will not tell you again
That I need you,
Your guidance and your wisdom!
 
Sevika: She also cannot forget the eclipse
The sun may not show
For the shadows will stroke.
But she will not let the world know
Her darkness.
For she has a duty.
 
Kinkari: She will not let the world know
Her distraction.
For she let men,
For she let fate,
Determine her today.
But her effort
Is for tomorrow.
 
Sevika: She cannot let the world know
Her darkness,
For she is the daughter of fire.

 

Kunti: We have need of seclusion
To wrap our wounds
In meditation and prayer.
 
Panchali: (In a tone of sadness and further loss)
Is that in sum
Your bond and link
With this Hastinapur?
How easily you ignore
The lacerations
Of a thousand women,
And hundred thousand more,
Conferred by you?
By us here?
Is it ample then
That you wrap, bind only your wounds
In a forest refuge somewhere?
Is that sufficient solace
For those you leave behind?
 
(There is no answer from Gandhari and Kunti. The two maids come and stand behind Panchali in a show of solidarity. Panchali does not see them but seems to sense their support, and continues)
 
Panchali: Even without two queens             
We, the women of Hastinapur,
Will cleanse the crimson earth
Of the rampage wrought
By the black dancer
Of Kurukshetra.
 
Gandhari: Yes, yes, Panchali
You can do it!
 
Panchali: (Clutching Gandhari's hand tightly)
We can do it
We can, yes,
Without your assistance.
So we will not seek
Your stay and support.
I am the queen.
I have to comfort them
And silence the wails
Of Hastinapur.
Of this kingdom,
That we have won
After a war that lasted a lifetime
And took eighteen days to end.
Do escape to the forest
The two of you,
If you can really escape!
For me there is no flight,
Outside of Hastinapur.
But I will not remain here, in this palace.
Where only the wails of Hastinapur
Will be my company.
For the outside will not keep out,
It will pierce these royal walls
And enter.
Innocent grief
Charging my loaded one.
 
Kunti: The guilt is for them
Who conferred the war.
The grief is for all.
 
Kinkari: In the war
Are only to blame
Those that deliver it.
 
Sevika: We have softer mourning,
For we are not laden
With contrition.
Our grief is our own.
In our homes
We will speak
Gently of our heroes.
 
Kinkari: No wrenching debate
Unlike this tormented nobility
That did slay a hundred times,
A thousand times over,
In personal rancour.
 
Kunti: Panchali,
You amaze me!
Stricken as you are,
You will yet fight.
Since now you are unselfish
In your persuasion.
We are persuaded,
Yudhishtir and myself,
Gandhari and her husband.
In the light of victory,
If defeat appears,
You will return it to victory!   
 
Panchali: For that reason
I will go out.
This body is too confined
For my restlessness.
I will petition the world
For my redemption,
And for a new identity.
For this tenacity of grief
I have to find solution
Beyond the palace!
 
Sevika: Kurukshetra is now
A battlefield of dead desires,
And futile grief and guilt.
 
Kinkari: Hastinapur is now
The field of action,
Of life’s combat against loss,
Of Karma,
Both of common and royal duty.
 
Panchali: I will remain here
In this discord.
For it will grant me absolution
Sooner than you can secure it
In the false serenity
Of a forest dwelling.
 
Gandhari: You know, Panchali,
I cannot remain.
These vast rooms are empty
Of people and voices.
The gloom never lightens here.
 
Panchali: The fatal consequences
Of the frailty of queens.
You did speak
In this, we have quite confirmed
Our ability, our awesome reach.
But, perhaps, even we,
Even we have potency for good
Not just the breach of it?
 
Kunti: Our chorus of cries
Must be private
For we can alone survey
The extent of our loss.
And our private remorse
That creeps in on us
In lonely thoughts
And lost longings.
 
Gandhari: To one another we have to repeat
That there is to inspect,
In our minds and outside,
The bleeding of those others.
 
Kunti: In the field of the fallen
We have looked for kings,
And mourned our own kin.
We passed by the lifeless soldier,
Seeking the slain prince.
But the great lament of the land
Is for the land,
And for every fallen one!
 
Panchali: The protection of people
Is the duty of kings,
Not just war.
And retreat after victory,
Or retreat after defeat,
In the name of grief
Is not nobility.
Our battle before us
Must be in our minds alone.
 
Sevika: The skin, sense,
Flesh and skeleton
Of this body
Are all wounded.
The refrain of our minds
Is without product.
 
Kinkari: We have to right the wrongs
Of our dead.
We have to engage our loss
To meet the expectation
Of Hastinapur.
 
Gandhari: Women have to survive.
They have a role.
Grief is a part,
But atonement must be more than an act.
We cannot surrender,
Because one costume
Fits worse than another.
And so, we will don our front
As queens always should
Even when the family rift
Has finally ravaged it.
 
Kinkari: So rulers,
Imperfect and afraid
Always wear masks.
 
Sevika: As with them
So with us, Kinkari!
 
Kunti:  It is after so many years
Of festering with selfish concerns,
That we have come out
Of royal seclusion
Only to see the devastation of Kurukshetra.
 
Sevika:  Now they seek to surface
From the dark labyrinth of recall.
 
Kinkari: When they come out
From selfish seclusion
Into the daylight
They will see our injury!
 
Sevika: They must first cease to fret
About what other
Could have come to pass
For princes and heirs
Had there been
In the palace
A more kindly cast
Of chance and circumstance.
 
 
Kinkari: Some of it chance, Sevika,
And some their choice!
A little circumstance, Sevika,
And a little their choice!
 
Gandhari: What went wrong, Kunti?
Chance it was, and circumstance.
But also our judgement, our choice!
How then can we leave, Kunti?
How then do we pay
For the privilege of our birth?
Do we only thrust suffering,
Death and war
On the people of Hastinapur?
 
Kunti: Our obligation, she says
Panchali says,
Cannot be fulfilled
By a retreat
To the forest.
 
Gandhari: I think she is right, Kunti.
 
Sevika: (Mocking this change of tone in the two older queens)
They begin to sense, Kinkari
That the dark armies
Kurukshetra has left arrayed for our nights
Will also journey with them
To their forest refuge.
 
Gandhari: Our upbringing
Is selfish and cowardly.
Our duty demands
Greater courage from us.
We that caused
The wounds of a nation, Kunti,
Have also to help it heal.
 
(Kunti nods in agreement)
 
Sevika: See Kinkari!
How they are all
Bonded by family!
Tied in a shared past,
They did not,
They could not desert each other
Before Kurukshetra,
And cannot do so even now.
 
Kinkari: They cannot disown each other
Even after scores are settled.
And we cannot leave either,
For now we have
A joint count and function.
 
Gandhari: (Signalling to Panchali, comforting)
Come and sit here, Panchali.
Before the war and after,
We women have been
All in the same camp.
 
Kinkari: Yes! We women
Have been together
In the camp of chill anxiety
Before the war,
And breaking sorrow after.
 
Sevika: For before the war
As also after it,
Women remain together
All on the same side.
 
Kinkari: Kurukshetra has passed
From existence to end.
 
Sevika: Those others moved
From their attributes
To their acts
In Kurukshetra.
 
Kinkari: And the dead 
Are no more!
No more than mere attributes
Of our memory.
 
Sevika: It is today our turn
To turn a desolate land,
To advance our talent
From attribute to act.
 
Kinkari: The grief of those
That indulge only in grief
Will never abate.

 

Gandhari: (As if she is repeating something that she has heard before)
Three women after the war,
And some hundred million more,
All women in the wailing vastness
For they remained silent,
When the men spoke!
 
Kunti: (Echoing her)
For women remained silent,
When the weapons spoke!
 
(Panchali gets up and begins pacing. She is talking more to herself, with the assurance of having finally found herself.)
 
Panchali: Before Kurukshetra
I was called Panchali.
And I answered,
Panchali answered
As daughter, sister
Wife, mother or queen.
 
(Panchali pauses, as if struck by something, in mid-stride)
 
Kinkari: (Seeming to also suddenly sense Panchali’s revelation)
Then for the dishonour
Done her as a woman,
Again it was
Through husband, father, brother,
That she sought retribution.
 
Panchali: Then for the dishonour
Done me as a woman,
Again it was
Through husband, father, brother,
That I sought retribution.
 
(She pauses)
It is shameful to me now
That even in revenge,
Was I incapable, dependent
Seeking amends through another!
But I have found Panchali
In Kurukshetra,
In this room.
 
(In triumph)
I am me, Panchali,
In loss, in wretchedness
And now in resolve.
Hence, in my duty,
So delayed to Hastinapur,
Let me be me, Panchali,
Alien no longer to myself.
 
(Panchali casts a glance at the two older queens and walks slowly out of the room.)
 
(Kunti comes and sits near Gandhari)
Kunti: There is little we have done,
There is little that rulers do
That reads well!
So let our future acts
Seek silence in history!
Gandhari,
Let us explore ourselves beyond us.
Partake of the cleansing
Of this crimson-dyed earth,
Of the healing of rent wounds,
And the weaving of torn minds,
For the young green
Must subdue this old red!
 
Gandhari: Life must covet life,
Beyond children and clan,
For earth and neighbour.

 

 
(They sit silently, not knowing what to do, now that Panchali has left them. A few moments later, they seem to realize that there is someone else in the room. It is Kinkari who for the first time has broken down and is sobbing quietly sitting in a corner. Kunti looks up. Gandhari too becomes aware of Kinkari’s presence.)
 
Gandhari: Kinkari ------?
(Kinkari does not move)
 
Gandhari: (Again, a little louder)
Kinkari?
 
(Kinkari looks up hesitantly.)
 
Gandhari:  What is it child?
Come here, Kinkari!
 
(Kinkari approaches Gandhari, slowly. Sevika also enters, approaches the group and stands a little away from them.)
 
Gandhari: Kinkari, come and sit by me.
 
(Kinkari rushes to Gandhari and sits at her feet. With great tenderness, Gandhari draws her close and strokes her head. Kinkari, overwhelmed by this affection, hides her head in Gandhari’s lap and finally bursts into tears.)
 
(Kunti overcome by this display of grief also moves towards Kinkari and tries to console her.)
 
Kunti: Stop crying Kinkari.
We are here for you.
We will be together,
Always.
 
Gandhari: (Consoling her, more like a mother))
Dry these tears, Kinkari.
You have been the bravest of us all.
We need you, my child.
 
Kunti: Kinkari, you have to help us
To stop crying for Kurukshetra.
 
Sevika: We have given it much,
But Kurukshetra
Has tendered us nothing but tears.
Hastinapur will be more grateful.
 
(Kinkari controls herself with an effort and stops crying. She finally manages a weak smile. After a pause, when she gets up, there is more determination in her face, and her young resolve is coming back.)
 
Kinkari: Let us go, mother.
 
Gandhari: Where to, my child?
 
Kinkari: She is in control now.)
Outside.
 
Kunti: Outside?
 
Kinkari: Yes. Outside. Out of these shadows.
 
(She sweeps the room all around her with a gesture of her hand, and shudders.)
Inside, it is Kurukshetra.
Outside,
Outside it is Hastinapur.
 
Sevika: Outside of this palace
There is a place
It is Hastinapur.
Outside of this grief and guilt
Of queens,
There is a place
It is Hastinapur.
 
(Kinkari helps Gandhari to get up.)
 
Gandhari: Yes, Kinkari
Hastinapur is now
Our field of action,
Of life’s combat against loss,
Of our Karma,
Of our common duty, Kinkari!
 
Kunti: Outside it is done,
Even if inside us Kurukshetra
Will lodge, and will last,
As a dark flank
To the limit of our days.
But we can, in Hastinapur,
Lighten its shadow,
And find quiet in our own time.
 
Sevika: It is we
That rule the war, within and out.
It is we that act,
Beyond the hope, beyond the doubt.
Life is dying, dying and yet living,
Life is losing, losing and yet giving.
 
Gandhari: (Stretching her hand out to Kunti)
Let us go, Kunti.
Hastinapur is outside.
 
(Gandhari, helped by Kinkari and Kunti, walk out of the room. Sevika follows them. They may perhaps learn to stop crying for Kurukshetra.)

 

*************************

 

THE CLOSING CHORUS


What is the dominion of a ruler?
What is his only right?

 

Right is the dominion of a ruler,
Dharma is his only right.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
The dominion of a ruler
Is not domination, not arrogance,
Not deception, not indulgence,
Only the right to rule in dharma.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
Not blood, not corruption,
Not prejudice, not power to son,
But in every deed dharma,
Every moment dharma.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
What is the dominion of a man?
What is his only right?
 
Right is the dominion of a man,
Dharma is his only right.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
The dominion of a man
Is not domination, not weakness,
Not flattery, not cowardice,
Only the right to live in dharma.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
Not intolerance, not aggression,
Nor violence, power over woman,
But in every deed dharma,
Every moment dharma,
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
What is the dominion of a woman?
What is her great right?
 
Right is the dominion of a woman,
Dharma is her only right.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
The dominion of a woman
Is freed from bondage and fear,
Unafraid of family and stranger,
Right to dignity, right to dharma.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
Not the shroud given by men and wars,
Not the dread of wounds and words, 
Not weakness watching, waiting to wail,
She is courage draped in dharma.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
What is the dominion of a people?
What is their great right?
 
Right is the dominion of a people,
Dharma is their only right.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
The dominion of a people
Is right to life, right to future,
To family, to view, to voice,
Right to the defence of dharma.
Dharma,dharma, dharma!
 
We are me and you and neighbour,
We are not silence, not submission,
Or mindless swaying to instigation,
We’re armed by dharma, free in dharma.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
 
Our only right is to do right.
Thus it is for ruler or people,
So it is for man or woman,
Dharma not fear, dharma not power.
Dharma, dharma, dharma!
Dharma is us, our worth!
Dharma is us, our truth!
Hence, in every deed dharma,
Every moment dharma,
Dharma, dharma, dharma

 

THE END

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Nasadiya Arts Copyright 2008