Divya, p.11
Divya, page 11
She began to feel embarrassed at the change that was taking place in her body. Although no one else had noticed or even suspected her condition, Divya, pretending to be unwell, spent most of the time confined to her chamber. Every moment of the day, her soul would call out for Prithusen, ‘Come back soon, Arya! Come back and take care of your Divya, and of that part of yourself which you have committed to her.’
The Harsh Reality
LONG BEFORE SUNRISE THE STREAM OF PEOPLE MOVING DOWN every road and path had become a sea of eager citizens headed for the northern gate of Sagal. A large number of people had passed the night or much of it at the gate itself. In their hands they carried garlands of flowers and in their pockets and uttariyas, flowers and rice-confetti. Under the festooned and garlanded gateway, musicians sat playing auspicious music, accompanied by the beat of kettledrums. Even the trees standing by the city wall and on the northern road were crowded with people bursting with eager curiosity. In their enthusiasm, many had set out along the road to the north, to meet the soldiers returning in triumph.
Runners brought news that the victorious army of Madra, with their wounded commander, Prithusen, was slowly moving towards Sagal. The previous night, the army had camped at a distance of two yojanas from the city. The commander was unable to travel more rapidly on account of his wounds. As soon as the news of Prithusen’s injuries reached Sagal, the aged physician Cheebuk, with a number of other eminent and experienced physicians of the town were sent post-haste on chariots drawn by the fastest horses.
Shading their eyes with their hands from the glare of the sun, and looking out towards the north, the crowd noticed a cloud of dust rising on the horizon. The sound of musical instruments was drowned in the loud cheering of the crowd.
Weary with pain and fever, surrounded by a slow-moving army carrying cartloads of gold, jewels, precious stones and valuable articles captured from the conquered territory of Darva, together with two thousand men and women slaves, Prithusen at last arrived at the city gate.
A delegation of happy high-born matrons welcomed the victorious commander and performed the arati with a hundred and one lighted lamps, their wicks burning in ghee, around Prithusen. Seero, the granddaughter of Mithrodus, the aged President of the Republic and Commander-in-Chief, anointed him as victor, and in accordance with the Greek custom, placed on his head a coronet of green leaves.
The President pressed the young commander’s head to his beard and remained standing in silent rapture for some time. Dev Sharma, the aged Chief Justice, supported by slave-attendants, stepped down from his palanquin and putting his hand on the head of the wounded commander showered his blessings on him. The feudatory chief, Sarvarth, Acharya Pravardhan and members of the Republican Council and other prominent citizens welcomed the young commander in a similar way.
The city of Sagal went wild with the joy of victory. Festivities continued day and night, in the streets and in the lanes. The booty captured in Darva, including male and female slaves, was put up for auction by the state officials to replenish the government treasury. The President distributed compensation in the form of money and slaves to those families whose breadwinners had been killed in the war.
Prestha, the magnate, organized a grand yajna for the propitiation of the gods. Acharya Pravardhan agreed to act as the Chief Priest of the yajna. A thousand priests chanted mantras and performed the religious rituals. In the holy Buddhist monastery, the magnate engaged a thousand bhikshus to chant the sutras before the image of the Buddha and thereafter gave them large donations in gratitude of their prayers for deliverance. He also offered a sacrifice in the temple of the Greek god Zeus.
Prestha’s palace resounded with rejoicing and merrymaking. The only section in the palace where silence reigned was the one in which Prithusen lay. The eminent physician, the aged Cheebuk, was in attendance. A competent surgeon, he stitched Prithusen’s wounds with strands of kausheya1 grass and bound them up with herbal dressings. He also prescribed a restorative, and ordered him complete rest. Through sleep induced by sedatives, Prithusen began to recover his health. Seero, the granddaughter of Mithrodus, the Commander-in-Chief, stayed day and night with the victorious commander, attending to his needs.
Divya heard from the mouths of Chhaya and other maidservants as well as from Dhriti Sharma and the children of the palace the accounts of the festive reception given to Prithusen on his entry into the town. She herself had not gone to the city gate because of a sense of embarrassment at her condition. Her position made her feel miserable. It filled her with a sense of pride that Prithusen had been received in triumph, but the news that he was wounded and suffering made her anxious and uneasy. ‘Had I been married before he left for the front, I would have gone to the city gate in a palanquin in whatever condition I was,’ she said to herself, feeling bitter. ‘I would have put his wounded head on my lap and brought him into the palace.’ That Seero should be by his bedside was a cruel irony. In that state of helplessness, she kept her body well covered, and guarding her secret with all possible care, lost herself in the contemplation of that moment when Prithusen would recover his health and their marriage would be duly solemnized with proper ritual and ceremony.
Divya grew impatient as she waited daily for the old maidservant Vapa to bring some message from the palace of Prestha. A moment came when she could not restrain herself any longer. After sunset, she wrapped herself up well, and taking Chhaya with her, went in a palanquin to the magnate’s residence.
Her heart pounded within her breast as she was ushered along the path leading to Prithusen’s room by the slave-girl. The slave gently pushed back the door leaf. There lay Prithusen, weak and emaciated, his head and shoulders heavily bandaged. Near the sick man’s bed sat Seero, fair-complexioned, her golden-yellow hair falling down her back, and on her head was a coronet of jewels, in the Greek style. With the help of a maidservant, she was preparing a potion for the patient in a vessel which stood on a pedestal before her.
As her eyes fell on Divya, Seero, with the authority of the mistress of the house, gestured her to sit down on a seat near Prithusen’s bed. Then, putting her mouth close to Divya’s ear, she whispered in a barely audible voice, ‘He is not to be disturbed. He is sleeping, and these are the physician’s orders. It is too exhausting for the patient if visitors talk to him.’
From where she sat, Divya could see only Prithusen’s bandaged head and shoulders. He was asleep. To be so near him and yet not be able to utter a word to him or touch him and to have a third person standing as a barrier between them, exasperated Divya. She yearned to take him in her arms. The passage of the last six months vanished from her mind, and the feel of his touch on the night of his departure came back to her. Seero’s presence and her discouraging attitude kept Divya from taking Prithusen in her arms. She looked at him with wide-open eyes and her gaze took in all of him. As her emotions could find no outlet, they flowed out as tears.
Seeing her agitation and sorrow, Seero came over and with a show of civility began enquiring after the health of the Chief Justice and the family. She also described in detail the critical condition of the patient and the heavy responsibilities that lay upon her, how night and day she had to be in constant attendance, how despite the insistence of friends and relatives she found it impossible to leave the wounded hero and join in the festivities.
To Divya, Seero’s behaviour appeared to be intolerably haughty and conceited. She seemed to be making fun of her unfortunate situation. She could say nothing in reply but only lower her eyes and remain silent.
‘You too seem to have missed the festivities, my dear,’ Seero said, her eyes opened wide with curiosity. ‘Without you it has been so dull in the cultural programmes. Devi Mallika is always looking for you and thinking about you.’ Her searching gaze travelled over Divya’s body, and the effort to suppress her smile made her full red lips quiver. She covered her lips with a corner of her stole.
Divya could not bear to wait for Prithusen to wake up. As politeness demanded, she somehow managed to express her wishes for the speedy recovery of the wounded hero and came away.
When he woke up, Prithusen learned from a maidservant about Divya’s visit and her departure. At the city gate, when the ladies and young women of the nobility had anointed him, his eyes had been searching for Divya, and his ears had been eagerly waiting to hear her voice. Whenever his pain subsided a little, his thoughts would turn to her. That she should have come after such a long time, and then gone away without even waiting for him to wake up, caused him great grief. As he was himself unable to go and see her, he became all the more restless. Troubled by her apparent indifference, he was at a loss to understand what could have occasioned it. He asked Seero why Divya had gone away without even waiting to speak to him.
An ironical smile hovered on Seero’s lips. With a pout of her thick red lips, she said disdainfully, ‘How can I tell what was on her mind, Arya? Maybe the great-granddaughter of the Chief Justice did not have enough time to wait until the patient woke up. What else can I say?’ Prithusen did not have the courage to ask any more questions to Seero.
His anxiety, since he was not able to allay it, became all the more oppressive. However hard he tried, he could not imagine what could have happened during his six months’ absence. ‘Can it be that Divya’s ardour has cooled towards me out of pride for her high birth? Can it be that she has grown afraid of her family? Or perhaps she has been drawn towards someone else, someone who is more attractive? Why is she unwilling even to see me now?’ Lying alone, he would spin all kinds of dramatic explanations.
The treatment administered by old Cheebuk proved highly effective. With his medicines and the life-giving virtues of rare fruits from Kandahar, Prithusen’s health soon recuperated. This in turn led to an increased eagerness for Divya. He had gambled his life in order to achieve success. Now, in the absence of Divya, that very success appeared meaningless.
Prestha, the magnate, was overjoyed at his son’s recovery. But when he learned that Prithusen had become sad and listless, he made arrangements to provide dance, music and other entertainment to divert him. But these distractions only jarred on Prithusen’s senses. Impetuously, he would dismiss the performers from his room with a wave of his hand and lie by himself in silence. Sometimes, the magnate himself would sit at his son’s bedside and make small talk to divert his son’s mind. But Prithusen took no interest in such talk either. He kept thinking of how best he could broach with his father the subject that was uppermost in his mind, but he could not summon up the necessary courage.
With his hand resting on the shoulder of a newly bought slave-girl, dark and beautiful, who held a veena in her hand, the magnate entered his son’s room. He sat down by the bed and said, ‘My son, your health has been making satisfactory progress, thanks to Cheebuk’s remarkable medicines. But why do you look so despondent? There is nothing more injurious to one’s health than depression. Cheer up, son, and try to take an interest in things. You have a fine ear for music. This slave-girl, Ulka, comes from Dakshinapath,1 and is an excellent veena player. She will play for you, and I am sure you’ll find her music very soothing to your troubled mind.’
The magnate signalled the girl to begin playing. At the first touch of the strings Prithusen was filled with a sense of weariness. He raised his hand for the girl to stop, and then, turning towards his father, said, ‘Father, I wish to go in a palanquin to pay a call at the palace of the Chief Justice. Do I have your permission to do so?’
‘In this state of health, when you are so weak and feeble? Why, what is prompting you to go there?’ asked the magnate in surprise, passing his fingers through his grizzled beard, now yellowing with age.
‘Before I left for the battlefield, I had asked for the hand of the Chief Justice’s great-granddaughter. I want to seek his approval now without delay,’ Prithusen replied, with his eyes cast down.
The old magnate continued to play with his beard. With a distant smile, he said, ‘Son, the gods have been pleased with you and have blessed you with knowledge, talent, aptitude, wealth and victory in battle. In due time, the gods will be generous in granting you the joys of matrimony. Besides Divya, there will be many a beautiful and cultured damsel whom you will find pleasing. A patient man who feels the pulse of time and acts accordingly is blessed by the gods with joys in this world as well as in the next. Wait for the opportune time, my son.’
Out of regard for his father, Prithusen made no reply, but began to feel all the more restless at heart. Divya would appear before him in many enchanting images: Divya dancing, her arms weaving sinuous gestures, her full bosom heaving above her slender waist, her shapely, supple thighs, showing under a tightly wound silken sari, her soft, oval face, her curved red lips, her sensitive nostrils, her large, trusting eyes; Divya on the day of their first meeting, her easy amiability; Divya with her eyes moist at finding him restless and impatient; Divya putting her head on his chest and murmuring words of reassurance. How his heart would throb at the touch of her limbs, her devotion and surrender on the night of his departure for the battle front! And his whole body would quiver with desire.
He yearned for Divya’s company, but then like a wave that breaks against the shore and then recedes, his mind, frustrated by his helplessness, would drift off to other things. ‘Why has she become indifferent to me? Was there such callousness behind that tenderness and grace! Her charm and softness, then, were as meaningless as the beauty of the moon reflected in the shallow waters of a stream.’
Seero was very loving towards him, yet he ignored her. Sometimes this indifference would embarrass him. But, then he would tell himself: ‘No, no, Divya must become mine.’ With his eyes on the ceiling he would think again and again of those moments of intimacy, when he was eager and Divya reluctant, and later, when she gave herself up to him, in his moments of extreme agitation. He would recall those times and ask himself: ‘How could she be so fickle?’
His father praised Seero to him, for was she not the granddaughter of the President of the Republic? Prithusen guessed his father’s intentions and one day said despondently, ‘Father, I have pledged my word to the Chief Justice’s great-granddaughter and I love her deeply. It is not possible for me to think of any other woman.’
The old magnate’s hand paused in the act of combing his beard. The furrows on his forehead deepened, tightly set in determination, but a smile still played on his lips. Turning to Chir, the attendant slave, who was fanning them with a large palmyra leaf, he said, ‘Let Vak take your place now.’
Vak, another slave in the household, was both deaf and dumb. He was kept to act as an attendant whenever confidential discussions took place. Prithusen sensed that his father proposed to discuss the subject seriously. He decided to remain firm in his resolve.
As the magnate talked, a smile continued to flicker in his eyes and on his lips, ‘My son, with young men, passion for women is always strong. But passion is one thing, and life quite another. Life is like a vessel full of water, whereas passion is like the bubbles that rise in it. To achieve success in life, it sometimes becomes necessary to suppress passion, similar to a medicine that may be unpalatable, but still has to be taken in the interest of health. You have abundant means at your disposal, and can pay court to any number of pretty women for the satisfaction of your desires. But let marriage be an instrument for the achievement of success and power. It is power alone that gives a man the right to enjoy and desire.’
The magnate paused for a moment to give his son a chance to reply, but seeing that he sat silent with his head bowed, he continued, ‘My son, a woman is not the only fulfilment of life; she is only an instrument for the realization of something greater than herself. A successful man, a man of influence can have any number of women, but not many opportunities present themselves to achieve success in life. Son, it is power alone that matters; the power of wealth and the power over men. Do you intend to turn your back on the favours of the head of state, the President of the Republic, and live merely on the aged Dev Sharma’s graces? Son, you understand politics. Just think, by marrying the granddaughter of the Greek President, you will, without any effort and without any opposition, become one of the high-born nobles; but by marrying the great-granddaughter of Dev Sharma, even if the liberal Dev Sharma does not oppose it, you will turn the entire Brahmin clan against yourself. The power of the Brahmins lies in the subjection of the common folk, in their right to secure the services of the people. If commoners were to become their equals, what special privileges would be left for the Brahmins to enjoy? They will never allow the common people to become powerful, but at the same time, they cannot ignore the influence of those who wield power. Why should we turn anyone against us? Son, it is friends and supporters that we need, not enemies.’
The magnate paused for a moment and glanced at his son, hoping that he would express agreement. But finding him silent and sullen as before, his voice softened, ‘Son, it is from the position of a common slave that I myself have risen, and have acquired a position where my son, an army commander, can aspire to become the Commander-in-Chief. What you have already achieved is not the peak of your possible success. The value of wealth and position does not lie in foolish self-indulgence, but in the power that they bring.
‘Son, the height of enjoyment lies in the exercise of power. It is time that you won the confidence of the President of the Republic and acquired the rights and privileges of a noble. Then, with your resources, you can raise an army of your own for the defence of Madra. That army will be your strength. You will be able to change the very face of the Republic of Madra. I want to see you in the seat of supreme power, as President of the Republic. I want to see you on the throne of Madra. If in Magadh, the rule of the Maurya dynasty, who were Sudras by birth, can be established, why can’t the rule of the Prestha dynasty be established in Madra?’
