The Palace of Illusions (47 page)

Now it was Drona's turn to ride the beast of war. Drona whom I trusted less than the grandfather. Drona who cared more about victory than about the paths he needed to take to get there. Under him, the Kaurava attitude toward the battle underwent a change. Bheeshma had had his faults, stubborn and autocratic as he was. But he didn't compromise on values. He upheld righteousness and expected his underlings to do the same. And they obeyed him— if not from love then from fear. Now, without his keen and critical gaze, their morals began to disintegrate. And, as echoes from one avalanche set off other avalanches, the actions of Duryodhan's warriors affected the behavior of our army.

Drona was still a fearsome warrior, but age sat on him more heavily than on Bheeshma. Deep down he knew that, unlike Bheeshma who had been bound by his word, he was here by his own choice. It leached away some of his certitude. He'd have to make up for it by being additionally harsh.

On that first day, as he rallied the soldiers by taunting them, the sight pulled me into his mind, that place where even the most equivocal among us cannot escape truth. He was thinking that he could have left the Kaurava court long ago and returned to a life of austerities. Indeed, as a brahmin, he should have done so once he'd finished teaching
the princes and received, in payment, the vengeance he so longed for. What tempted him to stay? Was it prestige? In his hermitage he would have been forgotten, but at court he sat next to the blind king, his immense, carved seat second in elegance only to the grandfather's. Was it the handsome remuneration he was paid for the military advice he provided? No. The pleasures of money and fame had long paled for him. It was love, that tricky shackle, which immobilized him.

Aswatthama, Drona's only son, had joined Duryodhan's coterie and, emulating the prince, had developed a fondness for lavish living. Drona sighed as he thought of Aswatthama the child, whose long-ago tears for the glass of milk he couldn't have had set in motion the first act of this drama. And of Aswatthama the youth, hotheaded and full of complaints, who had taken Duryodhan's side when the prince accused Drona of being too fond of Arjun. You care for him even more than for me, he'd cried bitterly. Drona, so good with weapons, had failed to find the words to tell him that everything he'd done so far, all the compromises he'd made, had been for love of him alone. One time, when Drona had mentioned the possibility of retiring from court, Aswatthama laughed, incredulous and scornful.
You want me to leave all my friends here for some godforsaken village in some backwater?
Drona, who understood the world somewhat better than the boy, knew that his presence at court and his power as adviser to the king contributed significantly to Aswatthama's popularity. And so for the sake of his son he remained, saying to himself, Another year, just another year. Until the day he found himself in a trampled field by a blood-red lake leading a million doomed men into battle for a cause he didn't believe in—and knew it was too late.

A long time ago, Arjun told me a story.

One day, to test their learning, Drona took the princes on a
hunt. Arjun, as usual, was the star: he shot down the swiftest birds just by listening to the sound of their wings; he killed the fiercest boar with a single arrow; when the princes grew thirsty, he sent an arrow into the earth, and a cool spring gushed up.

But then something strange happened. His hunting dog had rushed ahead of him into the forest, barking. Suddenly the barking stopped. When the dog returned, whimpering, someone had shut his mouth with a muzzle made of seven interlaced arrows, shot carefully to silence the dog without hurting him. Mystified, they went to see who could have achieved such a feat. Deep in the forest they found a young man dressed in leopard skins.

“Who is your teacher?” Drona asked.

The youth fell at Drona's feet and said, “It is you, master.”

Drona was taken aback. Then he remembered that, years ago in Hastinapur, a boy from a distant hill-tribe had come to him, begging to learn archery. Drona had refused, saying that he did not teach the lowborn. The boy had left without argument. He recognized the boy in this youth, now a master archer. The man—his name was Ekalavya—explained that, after Drona's refusal, he had retreated to the forest. There he made a clay image of Drona. Each day he prayed to it before practicing archery—and that is how he learned all the amazing things that he knew.

Arjun was furious. All his life Drona had promised him that he would make him into the greatest archer in the world. But here was this simple, self-taught man, already more skilled than Arjun could ever hope to be!

Drona guessed Arjun's thoughts. He said to Ekalavya, “If I'm your master, you must give me dakshina.”

“Of course!” said the young man, filled with joy that the teacher was finally accepting him. “Whatever you want, I'll give it to you.”

“I want your right thumb,” Drona said.

Everyone around him—even Arjun—went silent with shock, but Ekalavya didn't hesitate. He sliced off his thumb and laid it at Drona's feet—and Arjun was left without a rival.

To Arjun the incident proved how much his teacher loved him. But I, thinking of the forever-lost talent of Ekalavya as I looked down at Kurukshetra, wondered if it didn't demonstrate Drona's ruthlessness, his readiness to do anything to win. What shape would that ruthlessness take over the next few days?

Though I was concerned about what Drona might do, he only captured a small part of my attention. The rest of me yearned to find out how Karna was faring, how he conducted himself in battle. But the sight controlled me and would not allow me to turn to him. What was its cruel purpose? Even when momentous events occurred around Karna, I had to hear of them secondhand.

Such was the case with Ghatotkacha's death.

Ghatotkacha, that sweet, open-faced boy, had turned out to be a savage warrior, his father Bheem's rival at destroying enemy soldiers. He had an added advantage: since he was a rakshasa, a being of night, his powers increased as the day waned. When the Kaurava warriors were at their most tired, just before the trumpets announced an end to the battle day, he would fall upon them and slaughter them. On such an evening, when it seemed as though he would never stop, a desperate Duryodhan begged Karna to put an end to his carnage. Karna hesitated. Only one astra he possessed—the Shakti—had the power to kill Ghatotkacha. But he was saving it to use on Arjun.

But a panicked Duryodhan said, “I order you as your king—do whatever you must to kill Ghatotkacha.”

Karna was left with no choice. He chanted the mantra that would call up the Shakti. When Ghatotkacha saw the whirling missile
speeding at him, spitting fire, he knew his last moment had arrived. Perhaps his heart quailed, but his voice was steady enough as he told Bheem to report the manner of his dying to his mother. Then by rakshasa magic he grew to an immense size. When the astra exploded his chest, he leaned forward so that, falling, he would crush as many of the enemy as possible.

By this point in the war, we had seen countless dear ones perish. But Ghatotkacha's fall made us suffer a different pain. He was the first of our children to die. Bheem looked around him with unfocused eyes, mumbling that this was a perversion of nature. That sons should be arranging a father's funeral rites, and not the other way around. My own sorrow as I tried to calm him, though real enough, was many-pointed and guilt-ridden. I feared that without the one weapon that could have protected him from Arjun, Karna was now doomed. Was Kunti, too, thinking the same conflicted thought as she rocked back and forth, keening beneath her breath?

From the beginning Drona knew that he couldn't defeat the Pandavas in open battle. He decided on a different strategy. He would capture Yudhisthir and, in this way, end the war. But this, too, was impossible as long as Arjun guarded his brother. So each morning he asked a different king to challenge Arjun to fight, luring him to a distant part of the field. Though he realized what was happening, Arjun couldn't turn down the challenge: such was the illogical kshatriya code! When he killed one challenger, another warrior took his place. Susarma, Satyaratha, Satyadharma—their names scatter in my memory as dry grass before the wind. Still, each day Arjun returned in time to protect his brother and foil Drona's plan.

Drona grew more furious as time passed. On the thirteenth day of the war, after Arjun had been drawn away again, he decided on a
different strategy. He formed his army into the devastating and invincible formation known as the padma vyuha, and began to steadily advance upon the Pandava army. Even the greatest Pandava warriors could not break it apart, for a padma vyuha, shaped like a thousand-petaled lotus, can only be destroyed from the inside. Duryodhan was delighted. “What a wonderful idea!” he cried. “Now that Arjun's out of the way, no one can penetrate our war formation. Let's make use of this and wreak as much havoc on the enemy as possible. Maybe today is the day we'll get to Yudhisthir!”

Drona bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment, but he said, “There is one other person in the Pandava army that knows how to penetrate the lotus.”

“Who is it?” Duryodhan asked, his euphoria fading.