LAZY NOTES (IN LOCKDOWN)

 V

DHRITARASTRA’S ANGUISH

 

In the darkness of the night, Duryodhana, rattled, scared, intensely lonely and blood all over his body, fled from the battlefield. All his brothers had been killed, as had been Sakuni, his mighty generals and other celebrated warriors and his beloved son, Lakshmana Kumara. He directly went to Bhishma, lying on a bed of arrows, waiting for the auspicious moment to come when he would wish for his death. Duryodhana told him that he had lost everyone in the war and had come to him to take refuge in him. He prayed to him to save him. A kshatriya does not abandon the one who had surrendered to him and a grandfather cannot see his grandchild perish, no matter how wicked he might have been. Bhishma did not upbraid him but he did tell him, in much sorrow, how he had been responsible for his misery. He advised him to go to sage Durvasa, who was in charge of Vyasa Sarovara (the lake named Vyasa), take refuge in the venerable sage and with his permission, enter the lake. Once in the lake, none could harm him; be they mortals or immortals, he told him. He urged hm to hurry. The night was in its last phase. Once the day broke, the Pandavas would start looking for him, he said. Duryodhana thought of meeting his parents; so he headed to Hastinapura.

Earlier that night, Sanjaya had told Dhritarashtra about Duryodhana’s plight. The distressed father asked Vidura and him to go to the battlefield right then and bring his son to the safety of Hastinapura, taking advantage of the thick darkness of the night.  That was not possible, Sanjaya old him; the Pandava army was everywhere.

When Duryodhana arrived at his palace in Hastinapura, he found his wife Bhanumati waiting to welcome him ceremonially but when he told her that he alone of the Kauravas was alive and their son had fallen, she was completely devastated. But he consoled her, saying that not all was over. It was just that he was extremely tired and desperately needed rest. Having rested, the following morning he would return to the battlefield and win the war. Bhanumati couldn’t hear any of this; she had passed out.

Then he went to his parents. Sanjaya told Dhritarashtra that his son was in front of him. The father, who had been so very worried for the safety of his only surviving son, now that he was there with him, was missing the rest of his sons. He upbraided his eldest. He had come alone; where were his brothers, he asked him. He reprimanded him for not having given their due to the Pandavas, his brothers, for having listened to the wicked Sakuni instead of the wise Vidura, and for insulting Krishna – Narayana Himself! Because of him, he told him, his begetting a hundred sons had become futile. Utterly sad, defeated and mourning for his brothers himself, who he knew had sacrificed themselves for him, there was nothing meaningful that Duryodhana could say to his father by way of consolation.

Overcome with grief, the father continued in the same vein: having started the jajna of war (war viewed as sacrificial fire), he should not have wished to live alone. Looking at Krishna, he should have fallen in the war, fighting, and attained Vaikuntha (the abode of Vishnu). Then the devastated father said something he had never told him before. That moment of loss was too unbearable for him, an ordinary mortal in spiritual terms, to control himself. This is the best that can be said for him.

He should have listened to the sage counsel of the wise Vidura, he told his son. Vidura had advised him to have his infant eldest killed. If he lived, he would attain much prosperity and greatness but would bring him great grief by becoming the cause of the utter ruination of the entire family. If he was killed, his ninety-nine younger brothers would live, Vidura had said. Duryodhana’s killing would have ensured the continuance of his lineage and he, Vidura, was willing to perform that act of sacrifice himself. Dhritarashtra had turned down his brother’s advice. He told Duryodhana that he was regretting having done so now. Hurt by those cruel words, the son said,” Father, why are you being so merciless? At this difficult moment of mine, instead of pity, you are giving me pitiless words. Protect me for the night. I will win the war the following day.”

When he uttered those unfeeling and insensitive words to his eldest, he seemed to have forgotten why he had not allowed Vidura to kill his eldest born. As he gave the infants, one after the other, to the blind father to feel him, Vidura said of hm that he would be wicked. Much before he could hold all his sons, Dhritarashtra stopped him. If that was what he was forecasting for each infant, why must he sacrifice his eldest, he had asked Vidura. He would rather accept whatever destiny would bring him - that was what he had told Vidura, which he seemed to have forgotten. There is absolutely no suggestion in Sarala Mahabharata that Dhritarashtra’s decision was wrong. It just cannot be, if we think about it. Can it be a good reason for a father to sacrifice his eldest born so that his lineage continued with ninety-nine wicked sons?

Returning to the meeting of Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana, the troubled father expressed his helplessness to give him protection, even for that night. With the all-knowing Sahadeva, there was no place in the three worlds where he could be safe, he told his son. He told him then what Bhishma had told him: “take refuge in sage Durvasa and enter Vyasa Sarovara”. The difference was that Bhishma had given him that advice with kindness and Dhritarashta’s advice was expressed in hurtful language: jamaku dekhi darilu palai pasa ja ja - seeing Yama’s face, you got scared. Now, go away and enter (the lake).  Very harsh, unfeeling, unkind and unfair words for the one, who, even his worst enemies never considered to be a coward, who was afraid of death. And those were the parting words of the father to his son.

How very comforting it is to put the blame on someone else for one’s suffering! The blind king had forgotten that when he was the king, he had been grossly unfair towards the Pandavas and had deprived them of their due - long before his son did so.

 

LAZY NOTES (IN LOCKDOWN)

 IV

VIDURA"S SILENCE

For the Great War at Kurukshetra there was no one person in Sarala Mahabharata who everyone blamed as being solely or primarily responsible. For Gandhari and Dhritarastra, it was Sakuni - when the war was on. After the war, when she saw Krishna, she told him that he was solely responsible for the war since it was entirely within his powers not to allow the war to happen in the first place - no one would have gone against his words had he firmly told everyone concerned that there was to be no war. Arjuna squarely blamed Duryodhana, but the venerable Kuru elder, Bhishma, disagreed.  On the battlefield itself, when this exchange took place between them, Bhishma told him that the Pandavas’ commitment to peace was not total; had it been so, they would have given the kingdom to Duryodhana and returned to the forest. In a family, an unreasonable person is accommodated, not destroyed, he told his grandson.

In a technical sense, it was Duryodhana who started the war. The two armies were face to face, neither attacking the other. When his brother Durdasa declared that he would change sides and fight for the Pandavas and gave protection to the unarmed Yudhisthira, a furious Duryodhana ordered his army to attack Durdasa and that was how the war started. However, from this, it does not follow that he was responsible for the war.

At the same time, he could have stopped the war. In Sarala Mahabharata, it was Yudhisthira himself who made a genuine effort – the only one to do so - to avoid war. When Krishna told him on the battlefield that Arjuna was unwilling to fight, he told Krishna that he was right and then, unarmed, he went to the Kaurava side of the battlefield to negotiate peace with Duryodhana. He told him that he was not asking him now to give him five villages; all he wanted was just one. Duryodhana refused. About this exchange Gandhari surely did not know; had she known, she would not have thought that the Avatara alone could have stopped the war.

Now, who did the embodiment of Dharma on earth blame for the war? For Yudhisthira, it was Draupadi. When she fell to her death, he told the grieving Bhima that she was a sinner. By keeping her hair untied, she had instigated her husbands to take revenge. In her word and deed, she had goaded them, in a manner of speaking, to the battlefield. He also held Sahadeva responsible for much that had gone wrong. Being the knower of the past and the future, had he alerted him in time as to what was going to happen, things might have been different. But knowing everything, he would keep mum. He was a sinner, said the son of Dharma to Bhima.

Yudhisthira did not say anything about which situations he had in mind, with respect to what he had said about Sahadeva. In any case, that was neither the time nor the occasion for such things.

But let us think. When the first game of dice took place, Yudhisthira was alone in the Kaurava court. When the second game of dice took place, which led to his exile, he was not alone. In fact, that time, at Duryodhana’s instance, it was Sahadeva who rolled the dice for them both. And the two sticks this time were not Sakuni’s (see “The Second Game of Dice” in this blog, posted on May 7, 2010). Had Sahadeva alerted his eldest, the events might not have taken the turn they did.

Now, were there others in Sarala’s narrative who could have been held responsible but were not? Consider this:

This happened after the fire at the wax palace incident, in which, but for a very few, everyone knew that the Pandavas and their mother had perished. The family had performed the funeral rites. Along with the members of the Kuru family, Balarama and Krishna had wept. At that point of time, none but Vidura and Sakuni knew that Krishna’s tears were fake. But Vidura did not know that Sakuni knew that the Pandavas were safe.

Not long after the wax palace incident, Dhritarashtra decided to hand over the kingdom to Duryodhana. On earlier occasions, his proposal to do so had been resisted by the Kuru elders, who had firmly told him that Yudhisthira must be the crown prince, not Duryodhana. Now since they knew that the Pandavas were dead, they consented to the coronation of Duryodhana.

Had Vidura told them then that the Pandavas were alive, the coronation of Duryodhana would not have taken place. The Kuru elders would not have allowed it. Duryodhana would have been exposed. He would have received condemnation from the Kuru elders, the sages who used to visit Hastinapura, the Yadavas and the people of Hastinapura. Sakuni would not have been able to weave a story to protect him at that moment.

The Kuru elders would have decided to crown Yudhisthira, if not as the king, as the crown prince. In due course, he would have become the king. Duryodhana would not have been able to organize a revolt against him, let alone a war, at any time later. Who would have supported him? Maybe only Karna? None else of any significance from Aryavarta would have joined him at a battlefield against Yudhisthira.

Viewed thus, wouldn’t one say that Vidura’s silence, when he should have spoken, started a chain of events that led the Kurus to the battlefields of Kurukshetra? If Draupadi’s untied hair or Sahadeva’s silence could be viewed as responsible for the devastating war by the embodiment of virtue, whose judgement in Swargarohana Parva of the narrative has the status of the judgement of Dharma himself, why not Vidura’s silence?