Pregnant King, The (35 page)

‘Yes.’ Yuvanashva was intrigued by this series of questions.

‘It was my manhood that Shikhandi used to plough his wife’s field and my seed that he planted in her soil. That makes me Amba’s father. And you are my daughter’s mother-in-law.’

‘Oh,’ said Yuvanashva. His head was spinning. It was so complicated. But then who was he to complain? ‘I don’t think Amba knows anything about you.’

‘She knows a Yaksha made her father a man. But she prefers being Shikhandi’s daughter. When one truth is accepted, another one is rejected. In accepting you as father, Mandhata has rejected you as mother. In accepting Somvati’s womanhood, you have rejected the truth of his manhood.’

‘Only a Chakra-varti can accommodate all truths,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘I always believed that my son would grow up to be a Chakra-varti, like Bharata. But Mandhata disappoints me. He will not accommodate the truth about himself—how will he accommodate other people’s truth?’

‘Don’t you have another son?’ asked the Yaksha.

‘Yes, Jayanta.’

‘Does he accept your truth?’

Yes he did, realized Yuvanashva. At that moment, something struck him, something that he had not noticed all these years: his younger son’s unconditional love for him. He recalled Jayanta running up to hug him, demanding nothing in return, not even attention, sitting beside him when the rest of the family regaled themselves in Shilavati’s courtyard, oblivious of his absence. He would constantly tell his father, ‘They all
love you in their own way.’ Jayanta always tried to make him feel wanted and included. It struck him that Jayanta always saw good in people. He loved Shilavati despite her imperiousness, he loved Simantini despite her insecurities, he loved Pulomi despite her ambitions and he loved Keshini despite her bitterness. He did not begrudge his family its frailties. He did not protest against his father’s preference for the older son. Yuvanashva realized that in his obsession for the child he had created within his body, he had all but lost sight of his other son, the one created outside.

‘Yuvanashva,’ said the Yaksha. ‘There are two kinds of Chakra-vartis. One who makes room for all in his kingdom and one who makes room for all in his heart. Mandhata yearns to be the one. Jayanta is already the other.’

‘There is so much wisdom in the forest,’ said Yuvanashva, glad that he had met the Yaksha. ‘Perhaps because the rules of man do not apply here. Everything is accommodated. Nothing is domesticated or covered or hidden. Here, there are no Lajja-gauris smothered by lotus flowers. Apsaras and Matrikas can run free, unclothed. The forest is the kingdom of the Chakra-varti.’

Sthunakarna corrected Yuvanashva, ‘The forest accepts no one. It rejects no one either. No king makes rules for the forest. To exist here all you have to do is win the fight for survival. That does not mean
acceptance. Prajapati has given the faculty to love, accept and accommodate only to Manavas. That is why humans struggle to create society, where might is not right, where even the weak can thrive. A Chakra-varti’s kingdom will never be wild. It will be the perfect civilization, where everyone makes room for all.’

‘I was not allowed to thrive in Vallabhi. But no one can stop me in the forest from declaring that I am Mandhata’s mother and Jayanta’s father.’

‘The forest does not care, Yuvanashva. In the forest it does not matter if you are man or woman. You are either predator or prey.’

‘If it does not matter, O Yaksha, why did you spend thirty years chasing Shikhandi for your manhood?’

‘Because it was mine,’ snarled the Yaksha. Then he thought for a while. ‘No. That is not why. I gave it away of my own free will but when it was not returned, I felt incomplete. Now, with my manhood back, I still feel incomplete. This change in biology has not taken away my fears and my sorrows, my insecurities and my prejudices. I am what I was before. Only I have had a wider experience of life. Seen more, felt more. Known what it is to be within a woman. Known what it is to have a man within me. But all this experience has not taken away the turmoil of thought and feeling. I still yearn to please my king, Kubera, gain his acceptance and his respect. I long to be loved, have a child of my own. There was a time I thought my manhood would give me peace. I realize now, no flesh offers such a guarantee.’

‘You have been man and woman. I have been father and mother. Still we feel incomplete. What will grant us fulfilment?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That is what I will ask the teacher of teachers when I reach the mountain under the Pole Star.’ His renunciation finally had a purpose.

‘If he tells you, will you let me know?’

‘I will tell everybody,’ said Yuvanashva, suddenly excited by the prospect of meeting the great Adi-natha.

Bidding the Yaksha farewell, Yuvanashva continued deeper into the forest, determined to find the secret of completeness. Of one thing he was sure: it lay beyond the flesh.

Yuvanashva wandered in the forest, looking for the teacher of teachers, eating roots and shoots along the way, drinking river water, staring at trees bearing flower and fruit, watching animals eat, mate and migrate. In his journey, he met many hermits, each one seeking an answer to his own question.

Yuvanashva noticed something that escaped most people. All the hermits were men. Not one was a woman. ‘Why is it so?’ he asked, one day, when he took shelter in a cave on a rainy day. There were two other hermits in that cave. One was busy lighting a fire that would keep them warm. The other was enjoying the rain.

‘Because only the male flesh is the most evolved of all flesh, a vessel worthy of wisdom,’ said the hermit watching the rain. ‘It is acquired after going through a thousand times eight hundred and forty lifetimes. Women are but a lifetime away.’

‘What makes male flesh superior?’ asked Yuvanashva.

The hermit replied, ‘The male flesh, with its hanging appendage, cannot hide the truth of its desire but the female flesh can. The male flesh therefore can be caught before it submits to passion but the female flesh, only after.’

‘Women can never be Rishis,’ said the other hermit, who had overheard this conversation. ‘The seed of life, when withheld, can generate the fire that burns the fetter of desire and destiny that binds us to the world. Women, whether they like it or not, will shed their red seed each month. Men, however, have the power to conserve their white seed.’

‘Can any man be a Rishi?’ asked Yuvanashva.

‘Yes, provided one is willing to step away and look at life,’ said the first hermit, suddenly finding the conversation more interesting than the rain.

‘Most men fail to realize how lucky they are. They waste their lives conquering the world rather than reflecting on their life,’ said the second hermit, warming his hand over the fire.

Did my grandfather become a Rishi? Yuvanashva wondered. And Mandavya? Then he remembered his guru’s gentle wife, Punyakshi, who had silently and dutifully followed him to the forest. Was she just a companion, doomed by her body never to realize the wisdom of the Rishis?

‘Can I be a Rishi?’ asked Yuvanashva.

‘Of course. You have already taken the first step, become a sanyasi, stepped away from all things worldly.’

‘I may look like a man but I am not sure that I am a man,’ said Yuvanashva. The hermits looked at him quizzically. ‘I have created life outside me as men do.
But I have also created life inside me, as women do. What does that make me? Will a body such as mine fetter or free me?’

The two hermits in the cave had never heard such an incredible question. They sensed the truth of what was being said. They did not laugh. Instead, to Yuvanashva’s delight, they were genuinely intrigued. Both hermits spoke to other hermits, who spoke to their teachers who spoke to wandering sages. Before long, all the sanyasis across Ila-vrita were talking about Yuvanashva, the pregnant king, and his strange question. But no one had an answer for him.

‘Will the teacher of teachers know the answer?’ asked Yuvanashva.

The hermits replied, ‘He will surely know.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘Only the Siddhas, Yaja and Upayaja, know his whereabouts. They were his students. But before you ask for directions, ask them why one claims Adi-natha is an ascetic while the other insists Adi-natha is a nymph.’

Yuvanashva found Yaja and Upayaja under a banyan tree next to a waterfall in the forest, arguing about desire and destiny. They looked no older than on the day when they came to Vallabhi to perform the yagna. ‘Life is to be measured not by years but by breaths. We breathe only twice a day; once at dawn and once at dusk. After the war at Kuru-kshetra, there is not much of the world to inhale, but much to exhale.
Besides, we don’t argue as much as we once did,’ they said.

The Siddhas showed no signs of recognizing Yuvanashva. Before Yuvanashva could say a word, Yaja turned to Upayaja and said, ‘He wonders why I consider Adi-natha a man and why you insist Adi-natha is a woman.’

‘Must we tell him Adi-natha is neither?’ asked Upayaja.

‘How can he be neither?’ Yuvanashva exclaimed. ‘He must be one or the other or both, like Ila and me.’

‘Why?’ asked Yaja, smiling.

Yuvanashva had no answer.

‘Stop being such a Manava. Look beyond your limited experience. Look beyond your flesh,’ said Upayaja.

‘How can I? Flesh is what I see.’

‘But flesh is not what we show,’ said Yaja.

Upayaja spread out his arms and looked up at the sky, ‘Know more words, see new worlds. Stop being a Manava. Grow to be a Rishi,’ said Upayaja. ‘There is a world beyond the flesh, a vision greater than anything that is shown and seen.’

‘The Manava looks at the manhood of Adi-natha,’ revealed Yaja.

‘But when he wonders what the idea expressed through the manhood is, he becomes a Rishi,’ revealed Upayaja.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Yuvanashva.

The wind rustled through the leaves of the banyan tree. The steady sound of falling water was soothing. Yuvanashva felt his mind waking up like a lotus exposed to the morning sun. His heart felt the excitement of a bumblebee that senses the presence of nectar.

‘Tell me,’ said Yaja, ‘When the priest puts a bow in the king’s hand during a coronation, does he expect the king to be an archer?’

‘No,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘The bow is not to be taken literally. It is a symbol. It represents balance and poise that a king must display at all times. A bow is useless if the string is too tight or too loose and a king is useless if he is too stern or too lax.’

Then Upayaja asked, ‘Do you believe the teacher of teachers sits in the north under the Pole Star?’

Yuvanashva was surprised by the question. ‘Of course he does!’ he said. He saw the brothers smiling. Suddenly unsure, he asked, ‘Does he not? Why then are all sanyasis told to walk north towards the mountains?’

‘Maybe the north being referred to is not the literal north but the symbolic north. The place where all things are still and stable. What better way to represent stillness than with the Pole Star? What better way to represent stability than with mountains? North, the symbolic north, indicated by the still Pole Star and the unmoving mountain, is the seat of wisdom, which enables man to cope with change.’