#vrishasena

She thinks differently when the child kicks the basket and the divine boot sends the woven lid flying; when he moves the way babes do, joyful and squirmy, and the sun reflects the shine of his gifts, blinding with wealth, attractive to all manner of unsavoury men.

“Lord,” she prays, bent over. “Lord, look after him, for he is yours, and now he has no one. Send him to someone who loves.” And Surya, cruel and wise and mourning, does.

2.

Radha finds a babe laden in gold. His armour, so tight it is as if it is fused to skin, gleams; his kicking feet hit with the might of hard metal.

“Divine,” she declares, “and god-given.”

Adhiratha does not speak. His brow is furrowed, troubled, but he picks the child up anyway, cradles him against his chest.

Radha holds his hands, and counts ten little fingers, kisses each. They curl against her mouth, tiny nails pricking her like old needles. She moves to his little legs, holds each one as Adhiratha sways, makes faces at him. The babe giggles.

Radha tugs at a shoe. It does not budge. She tugs again.

“Huh.”

“You hold him,” her husband says, in the proud and slightly mocking way men do when their wives need help in some task of physical strength. “Let me try once.”

Adhiratha tries once. Adhiratha tries twice. Adhiratha tries thrice. He tries four times, five times and then six, notices his wife’s tilted smirk.

Adhiratha straightens, head held high. “Shoe’s not coming off,” he says with dignity, and stalks away. Radha runs after, half-laughing and half asking about doctors and soaps and other instruments of relief, child in her arms and joy in her heart.

3.

“Oooh, look at him, suited and booted, come to fight!” Prince Bheema glowers at him, hooting lost to a shout of rage. “Good boots does not a king make! Go back to your horses and your whip.”

Vasusena shakes a little, down to his toes. It makes his boots rattle a little against the earth, a dull clunk-thud, barely audible amidst the people’s cheers, but embarrassing nonetheless.

Duryodhana blusters some answers. Bheema blusters back. Arjuna picks his bow in challenge, but the fight is left unfinished.

Duryodhana takes him home.

In the splendour of the royal palace, Empress Gandhari runs her hands over his face, his shoulders, and his armour, in the manner of one who cannot see seeking the shape of what they wish to know.

“What is this?” she asks of him, at the carvings.

“An armour, divine in origin, and most beautiful,” Duryodhana boasts, as if it is his own. It is. Vasusena is his, has been since that moment when the angry prince Duryodhana came to defend him, will be till the bitter, bitter end.

“And shoes as well, I hear,” Dhritarashtra says.

“Bheema is too much!” Duryodhana shouts.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he says, and when he rises, Gandhari is smiling.

The Emperor shakes his head. “No, not that. I hear him when he walks, even though he is rather quiet. Well, child, if you be my son’s friend, I hope I shall hear your steps in my halls many times more.”

Vasusena bows. The blind Emperor does not know it, but the Empress, with her hands on his shoulders, does.

+1.

Afterwards, when the satisfaction of having the king of gods shamed and holding his boots is gone, when his skin has healed to a smooth baby pink; afterwards, when he goes home, and his son runs to greet him at the door – to touch his feet – and stops; afterwards, there is no creature as wretchedly startled as Vasusena.

He stands in the grass for a long while, feeling it tickling his toes. It is a sensation violently gentle, one he cannot help but long for, half-nauseous with the feeling like a starving, hungering thing.

Vrishasena takes him by the arm and leads him inside. The floor is cool under his feet, the marble slightly damp from recent wiping. His bed is soft against the length of his body, and so is Padmavati when she hugs him, but differently, half familiar and half not. He holds her close as she laments and weeps, and her tears burn.

They sit together a long time, till day sinks into dusk and then night, and lamplit houses twinkle in the horizon. Vrishasena returns the hour before dinner, a lumpy thing in each hand.

“Father,” he says, placing them by his feet. At Vasusena’s uncomprehending look, he lifts them meaningfully in the air.

“Shoes,” he says.

Shoes.

For him.

For Vasusena.

.

.

Vrishaketu is cold. There is a metal pot cooling his hand, and cold water within. The warmth he knows is burning in pyres, and his bones are freezing, and his fingertips burn. Perhaps if he jumped in, the fire would heat him from within.

.

.

In his dreams, his mother weeps over their inevitable fate. “Run!” she tells him. “Run! Don’t let us ruin you!”

He wakes, and his mother weeps still. “Run!” she tells him. “Run! Don’t let them ruin you!”

.

.

There are hands on him, holding him back. He is too weak and too young, a mere boy by the measure of their people, and he cannot fight back.

“Prince,” someone says. It is the man holding him, lamenting like a widow. “Please, young prince… I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Oh gods, take me, and spare them! Spare them please, my children and theirs – they are faultless! Oh gods, gods…”

The hands that hold him are red with blood.

.

.

“Your uncle wishes to make you a warrior,” his mother says.

She has aged, her hair streaked with white, her face wrinkled. She is still in her mourning clothes, and as beautiful in white as she had been in red and gold. Vrishaketu thinks she will never stop mourning.

“Yes,” he answers, because it is true, and because Vrishaketu will agree.

“He killed your father and your brothers.”

Mother always loved them more than they loved her. His father had been a passionate man, who gave himself to many things, striving each day for greatness. Most of his brothers had taken after him. Vrishasena, eldest of them all, had even routed two Pandavas and fought Arjuna. Those that had been different were secretly too ashamed to be so.

Vrishaketu is like his father too. He loves his mother less than she loves him, and he too would leave her to be a warrior, like his brothers and his father before him.

“Father killed his sons too,” he tells her. “It was war.”

Mother looks listlessly to the side. She knows what he knows, that Anga is theirs by the mercy of Hastinapura, as it always as been, but their only friend in the Emperor’s court is the pity of the man who killed their husband and father, and the keeper of Anga is only a boy.

When Arjuna comes to take him, Mother’s  face is as lifeless as a field of cut grain. She listens quietly to Arjuna’s tearful promises about keeping him safe, and bids him farewell with only a simple “Be well.”

Vrishaketu rides away from Anga with his father’s murderer. Karna is standing at the border, silent and ghastly, as handsome in death as he had been in life. His eyes are gentle, his lips are pulled in a paternal smile. The man who had challenged a prince in front of the world, who had tricked the most terrible teacher of them all, understands his son like no one else.

Vrishaketu stares at him till he disappears at the horizon, and doesn’t look back again.

.

.

“How much did… er, your father teach you?”

They are in the garden, because Arjuna seemed to think this would make things less tense, less formal. Vrishaketu watches the man in silence. He has never looked for it before, but now that he does, he sees the familiar arch of his father’s brow, the sharp curve of the cheekbone, the long lashes of his eyes. It is not comforting at all.

“Not much,” he tells Arjuna, before the silence grows awkward. “If His Highness so wills, we may start from the beginning.”

Arjuna looks vaguely reluctant. Perhaps he doesn’t want to teach Vrishaketu, and now regrets offering. Perhaps he doesn’t want to teach something that Vrishaketu’s father had taught him, perhaps he thinks that would be like tainting a memory. Perhaps he is judging his father for not teaching him enough. Or perhaps that is what his face looks like regardless.

Vrishaketu cares little about such things. He is here to learn.

In the end, when no other answer is forthcoming, Arjuna sits down with him, and slowly starts with the basics of each weapon. Vrishaketu listens attentively. When the lesson is over, he bows and says, “Thank you, Your Highness.”

Arjuna flinches. Then he says, haltingly, “I know things have been hard among us…”

Vrishaketu carefully keeps his face neutral. Arjuna falters.

But this son of Kunti, of all of them, cannot be accused of cowardice, so he soldiers onwards foolishly, “I–  uh. You have been rather, um, quiet, coming here. I understand this place is unfamiliar to you, but please, consider it your home.”

“I thank His Highness for his kindness.”

Arjuna flinches again.

Shut up now, Vrishaketu thinks, you have said what you wanted to.

Arjuna doesn’t shut up. “There is a… uh, a room, in the east, where there are books. I was told you like to read – ” here, Vrishaketu sees suddenly the image of his father, kneeling with him and Sushena, laughing and pressing dried flowers on expensive paper “– and my son… Abhimanyu… yes, Abhimanyu, he liked to read there. Before. So, uh. You can do that.”

Vrishaketu stops, and does not turn towards Arjuna. “It would have been so much better, wouldn’t it,” he says casually, “if the late prince Abhimanyu lived, and I died? Fate is indeed cruel.”

Arjuna’s wooden sword drops on the ground with a clatter. There is a hot, gasping breath, as if he cannot hold back tears, and then Arjuna dashes past him and into the palace. Vrishaketu is left standing in the garden, dusk falling around him. In the distance, lamps are being lit in the palace.

Vrishaketu does not bother to pack.

.

.

It takes him eight days to ride back to Anga. All the way he imagines what he would tell Mother.

“I could not do it,” he imagines himself saying.

Or, “I messed up.”

Or even, “I missed you more than I imagined I would, and they all pity me – the poor orphaned boy, and I can’t stand it anymore!”

In each case, his mother opens her arms and welcomes him back. They leave, because of course they do, and they forget all their past life, and live anew.

At the border, people gawk at him.

“Oh,” someone says, “he’s back!”

“Thank the gods,” says another, “the messenger must have been quick!”

And a third says, “Poor thing! Ride harder, prince!”

Why are you pitying me? Vrishasena thinks crossly, you are worse off.

And then, what messenger?

The path to the palace is empty, the flag of Anga is missing. His father’s last remaining minister (now his) runs down the steps to him.

“My prince,” he sobs, gathering him in his arms. “Oh my boy, my boy!”

His father’s ghost lingers by the doorway, silent and sorrowful. Vrishaketu knows what has happened even before he sees the body.

.

.

Arjuna, the better rider, comes to Anga on hearing the news seven days later. Vrishaketu has not written him a letter, because there is nothing he can say that the messenger previously sent wouldn’t. He doesn’t perform his mother’s last rites, because he doesn’t know what to do, and there is no one to teach him the customs of his family, and this is not a war funeral. He doesn’t cry, because there is nothing that can be achieved by crying, and all tears had done to his mother was to send her to an early death.

By leaving, Vrishaketu had done that too.

Arjuna jumps from his horse and straightaway seizes his father’s minister (now his) by the front of his clothes.

“Your prince!” he shrieks, close to tears. Arjuna, he notes absently, cries a lot. “Is your prince here? Oh please, please tell me he is here!”

“Yes…?” the minister wheezes; presently being rudely disabused of the unconfirmed notion that Vrishaketu had informed anyone in Hastinapura of his whereabouts.

“Your Highness,” he calls from the top of the stairs, “be welcome.”

.

.

Vrishaketu learns that the Dowager Empress Kunti is coming, as are Emperor Dhritarashtra and Empress Gandhari. Emperor Yudhisthir is coming too, with his brothers and wives. It is to be a grand ceremony, with a lot of emperors and empresses. Too many.

His father’s minister (now his) advises him to wait to receive them. His mother’s corpse, bathed in oils and balms, tells him otherwise.

“They said you should do it if they are too late,” says Arjuna, referring to the funeral.

His father is standing at the doorway, looking longingly at his mother’s casket. He offers no advice.

“I will do it now,” Vrishaketu decides.

In the evening, he takes a lit log to his mother’s pyre, and watches the familiar fire burn away his family. He is awake and dreaming, for his dream is his reality, and it is a nightmare.

Mother rises from the pyre slowly. Unlike his father, she is not wearing the funeral whites. The familiar gold and red looks gentle on her. She seems younger, her hair black again, and his father bends over the fires to help her out. Karna was divinely beautiful – the son of the sun – but Padmavati had been lovely in her own rustic way.

She clings to his arm now, like she did in life, and he snakes his hand around her waist and presses his lips to her hair – a familiar picture of seven long years that he did not know to cherish before.

They come to him then: his mother puts her arm around his shoulders, his father pats his head. It is a weightless, ghostly touch, beyond this world, known only by a minute supernatural thrill, but he feels it as if it were as real as it had been less than half a year ago, and his father says quietly, “Live. We will wait for you.”

Vrishaketu looks up at them, and then beyond, where all his brothers are standing over his mother’s pyre, and holds this last image of them close to his heart, watching them till they fade away – together, his mother finally no longer waiting.

Arjuna comes to stand by him.

People murmur, for Karna had been dearly loved, in spite of his temperamental ambitiousness, or perhaps because of it. What do they think of his son standing so close to his killer?

“I’m sorry,” Arjuna says.

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t have said that before.” He kneels by his side. “Please, I am not here to replace your father.”

“No,” Vrishaketu acknowledges thoughtfully. “You are here because you killed your brother and now you feel bad about it.”

There is a long silence, and then Arjuna says, “…yes. Will you still come with me?”

“I have nowhere else to go.”

“That’s not– ” Arjuna begins protesting, then stops. Karna would have spat at Arjuna's feet and clawed his way to vengeance. Vrishaketu is not his father, he really has nowhere to go.

“I’m sorry,” Arjuna says again, at last, and wraps his arms around him. They are warm and heavy, like an anchor tethering him to earth.

Vrishaketu’s chest feels tight. “I hate you.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Me neither.”

“I want to go home.”

“Me too.”

“Where is home, uncle? Where is home?” There are fat tears rolling down his eyes. Where Arjuna’s face rests, his shoulder is wet.

“I don’t know.” Arjuna sobs.

Duryodhana perks up like a hunting dog. “Why do you need him?” he demands, possessive as ever.

“I am sure Her Majesty has her reasons,” Uncle Vidura tries, but Duryodhana is on a roll.

“You keep trying to speak to him, cornering him at court and courtyard, trying to turn my friend against me! Why else would the Pandava’s mother be so interested in the man that trounced her sons? I think-”

No one manages to hear his what he thinks, because Kunti interrupts this tirade by screaming, “He is my son!”

2.

In hindsight, it is only meet that Karna – who is apparently his brother – gatecrashes the party halfway through Kunti’s sobbing explanation. Arjuna is reasonably sure the man has never given up the chance to barge into situations with the discretion of a charging bull. Perhaps that is why they call him Vrisha.

Much to his chagrin, Karna and his sons are immediately swept up into the Kaurava ranks even as their mother speaks of floating the baby in the river.

Duryodhana speaks right over her, like the churlish prince he is, and asks, “What took you so long?”

“The storms felled quite a few trees.” Arjuna’s newfound brother shrugs and turns to Mother Kunti with a look of abject concern. “Who is this baby in the river? Should we send out search parties? Surely, it is not right to just leave him be.”

Half the gathering stares at him. Uncle Vidura lets out a long-suffering sigh. Pitamaha smacks his forehead into a pillar. All in all, the Kuru family never fails in being predictable.

3.

For his own part, Karna takes the news surprisingly well, right up until Pitamaha reveals that he would now be officially part of the family and one of the contenders for the throne. This sparks a terrible debate – for all his meddling in Duryodhana’s plans, the King of Anga appears to have little interest in being king of anyplace else. Brother Yudhisthira, with all his half-divine morality, protests being a part of any contention that involves his older brother as a competitor. Uncle Vidura, who is the Pandavas biggest advocate in the Kuru court, takes this about as well as expected, which is to say: not well at all.

Arjuna has migrated to a corner to escape the shouting, rubbing his forehead to put off an oncoming headache. A figure sidles up to him and offers a small canister.

“This might help, Uncle.”

For a moment Arjuna nearly mistakes him for Karna – which should not be possible, given that his new brother is still yelling about something, and would never call him ‘uncle’ besides – but then he notices the differences. Anga’s Crown Prince is as fair as his father, but his cheeks are still adorably round, and his hair is several shades darker. He is also smiling, which is not a reaction Arjuna has ever garnered from his father, although he has seen Karna laugh often enough in his cousin’s company.

“Vrishasena, is it? Well met. What is this?”

Vrishasena bows. “Yes indeed, uncle. My greetings. This is for your headache.”

Arjuna takes the canister with raised eyebrows. Inside, there is a familiar slimy green paste. “You carry balms around?” he asks, smirking.

Vrishasena shrugs easily. “People are annoying,” he says, then winks cheekily at him and adds, “not you though. You have pretty hair.”

Arjuna’s startled laughter lasts a very long time.

+1.

“Father is wonderful,” Vrishasena says, nocking an arrow on his bow, “but he and mother kind of fought and now he’s upset.”

“I think he is mad at you for taking lessons from me,” Arjuna says, pressing gently down on his shoulders. “Stop being so tense, or you will miss.”

Vrishasena shrugs his shoulders and tosses his head obligingly, then stands much looser. “Nah,” he says, then releases the arrow. It pierces the swaying mango halfway through and carries it into the bushes. “He has stolen Abhimanyu, so he thinks it’s a fair deal. Besides, he likes having brothers.”

Arjuna would like to contest that, but it is true. For all his follies, Karna is astonishingly adept at micromanaging a hundred and five siblings, plus the two extras, without resorting to moralizing or murder. He’s still not ready to give up their reputation as rivals though, so all he says is, “Good shot.”

Vrishasena smirks at him. His nephew has grown quite a few inches in the months they have been away, so they are mostly eye-to-eye now.

“Just good?” Karna’s son definitely has Karna’s cockiness. “Not ‘excellent’ or ‘magnificent’ or ‘sublime’?”

“No,” Arjuna slaps him behind his head, laughing, “you do not need a bigger ego.”

“It’s not that big, uncle,” Vrishasena protests.

Arjuna laughs again. “If you stop pestering me for compliments, I will help you sneak into the kitchen. The cook is making special sweets today.”

Vrishasena pouts, thinking. “I also get to braid your hair.”

Little Vrishasena is four years and a day old when he first sees the Imperial Palace at Hastinapura. The dome shines in the diffused morning light, and it looks to him that it is drenched in liquid gold. His father laughs when he says so and puts a large hand upon his head. “This is not even half of it, little one.”

The doors are polished wood, carved with gods and gargoyles, higher and wider than those at Anga. As his father greets Uncle Duryodhana with a smile and a hug, he spies two curly heads behind the mahogany monstrosity.

“Namaste,” he says politely, with a bow of his head like Maa taught him. “I am Vrishasena, son of Karna of Anga.”

One of them, a younger boy, smiles up at him, wide and trusting. “Lakthman,” the child says, words dragging through his lisp, and Vrishasena is in love.

It is Drona who takes over his tutoring when Vrishasena turns eight. Mother is very unhappy about it, but Father shakes his head. “Drona is the best option, unless you want him to do what I did,” he says.

Mother wrings her hands. “I mislike that man, and that he comes to court.”

Father pats her on the shoulder. “It will not be long, dearest,” he says, and Vrishasena listens carefully. He would return a grown-up warrior, and surprise everyone. The thought of it puts a smile on his face, and he is not so scared to go away alone.

Drona's aashram is noisy and big. When he gets down from the rickety cart that ferries all the students to and fro, he sees Lakshman and Lakshmanaa standing on the dirt track, clutching mud-coloured satchels to their chests. He runs up to them and gives them a hug and laughs at the shock on their faces.

“Father said there was a surprise for us!” Lakshmanaa beams at him. “You were the surprise, weren't you?”

“Maybe,” he says, although he is no less astonished. “Do you like it?”

“Yes!” the twins shriek, and Vrishasena feels warmth flood his chest.

On the third year of his schooling at Drona’s aashram, Vrishasena gets a letter from Anga. No one is allowed to send or receive letters from home, and thus any correspondence brings with it the promise of ill-news.

He takes it from the messenger with some apprehension, and the twins come to look over his shoulder.

“Dear Vrishasena,” reads his father’s slanting script, and for a moment Vrishasena – who had thought the worst – forgets to breathe.

“You have a brother!” Lakshman screams right next to his ear, with no respect whatsoever for his privacy, and Vrishasena has to flinch from the sheer volume of it.

“We read faster than you,” Lakshmanaa – who has somehow snuck into the boys’ residence – beams happily. “This is so sweet!”

Vrishasena finally manages to master his relief and reads through the rest of it. His brother is newly come to the world, born only a few weeks ago, on the last of Sravana’s rainy evenings.

“We named him Vrishaketu,” Father writes. “It only seemed meet, since you are Vrisha-sena.”

He reads those lines again, presses the letter to his heart. Behind him, he can feel the twins shifting, and then their little arms hugging him. He pulls them close, and relishes in the joy lighting up his world.

Vrishaketu joins the aashram the year Vrishasena turns nineteen – and he thinks he has never known greater delight. His brother comes the same way he had taken eleven years ago, on the same rickety cart down the same dirt track, although the horses are new. He is tall for his age, with Father’s bright face, and Mother’s compassionate smile, and Vrishasena all but runs to him.

His brother lets out a full belly laugh as he lifts him and spins him around, and then Lakshman (and Lakshmanaa – who is, at this point, the sneakiest woman in existence) are clamouring around him, and he has to kneel down so everyone can hug each other.

He does not know it then, but it would be the happiest he would be in a long time.

A year later, twenty years old and a warrior through and through, Vrishasena leaves his sobbing brother and the heartbroken twins and for the first time in more than a decade, goes home.

Anga is all decked-up for his return, and the citizens hold out their hands to him as he passes. His chariot rolls past no less than eighteen groups of men with drums around their neck, and as the capital comes closer, the air thickens with the fragrance of sweets and syrups.

It is, however, the sight of his parents waiting for him, Uncle Duryodhana and Uncle Ashwatthama flanking them, that brings tears into his eyes. He leaps off his chariot and runs the last few steps to his mother’s embrace. His father wraps his arms around them, as if he could shore them up by strength of will alone, and Vrishasena sinks into that warmth with a sigh.

Half a year later, Vrishasena meets Arjun for the first time when they visit the newly made palace at Indraprastha. No one he knows speaks well of the Pandavas, and he is… not curious, precisely, but interested.

The man in question is tall and dark, with a shock of hair tumbling from under his glittering crown. He greets them with a courteous, albeit stiff, smile, and a regal tilt of his head, and introduces Vrishasena to his son Abhimanyu.

Vrishasena quite likes Abhimanyu. The young prince is quick-witted and sharp-tongued, and for a while, he might as well have been back in Drona’s aashram. Abhimanyu takes him by the arm and shows him around the new palace, away from the clamour of visiting royalty. They sneak away to the kitchens together. His companion offers him sweets with a wink and a giggle, and it occurs to him they might now be friends.

Vrishasena would have been willing to follow Abhimanyu around all day, but they are princes still, and needed in the main hall. The kings gather there with solemn faces, seated straight-backed upon expensive chairs. Father catches his eye and frowns but says nothing.

There is an oddly tense atmosphere in the hall. The assembled Kings are silent and still, and Krishna, King of Dwarka, seems to be murmuring something placatingly to the recently crowned Pandava King. Uncle Duryodhana leaves his seat and marches up to the raised podium at the end, right up to King Yudhisthir’s nose, and starts a belligerent rant about punishments being kinder than crimes.

Vrishasena looks to Abhimanyu for clarification, but his friend is as bewildered as he is. Then Uncle Duryodhana whirls around, the edge of his fashionable shawl nearly smacking Queen Draupadi in the face, and strides away. “Come,” he orders. “We are leaving.”

The rest of his retinue gather themselves and follow him immediately. His father catches his eyes again. Abhimanyu pats his shoulder. “Go, before there is an even bigger scene.”

“Yes, I-”

Splash!

The two of them turn in horror. Uncle Duryodhana, Crown Prince of Hastinapura and arguably one of the most powerful men in Aryavart, sputters in a pool. It is so artfully crafted that Vrishasena is not sure he would not have mistaken it for the floor.

Around them, the kings are laughing, as are the Pandava brothers. Only the eldest, Yudhisthir and the Pandava Queen Draupadi hurry forward, appalled. To his horror, he sees most of Hastinapura’s retinue hovering around, unwilling to get in the water. It is his father who swims to the humiliated Prince and hauls him up, drenched clothes and all.

“Oh, Cousin!” Yudhisthir says helplessly, wringing his hands.

His wife is more sensible, as she bids a maid to bring towels. “My Lord,” she says softly, “we beg your pardon. Please do sit down. We shall-”

Uncle Duryodhana interrupts her mid-speech. “I will not stand for this,” he roars. “You play at being Emperor from a Kingdom my father gifted you, you try to steal what has ever been rightfully ours. You kill our allies upon your sacred fire, and scorn and humiliate those who have ever taken you since childhood!”

“Cousin, please,” Yudhisthir begins, but his brother, Prince Bheem interrupts with a taunting laugh. “Are you as blind as your father?” he jeers, and giggles fill the hall. The King and Queen turn with shock on their faces, but the damage is already done.

“You will regret this!” Uncle Duryodhana hollers, no longer caring about his dignity. “Wretched bastards of the forests, you will regret this!”

Red in the face and wet as a water-nymph, Uncle Duryodhana strides out. The titters quieten down to an uneasy silence. The promise of retribution hangs in the air.

Later, Vrishasena’s beloved father and uncles would reduce his cousins to paupers, would drag and disrobe their fire-born wife. There would be banishment and war and bloodshed, and the then warrior Vrishasena – bold and fleet and swift – would cut down scores and scores of people before falling to the cruelty of Arjun’s arrows – arrows of the man who had greeted them with a smile and given him a transient friendship. Vrishasena would die in pieces, not even knowing that he died by an uncle’s hand.

Vrishasena gives the guards a dubious look, then makes his way towards his target. Krishna notices him at once, and a beatific smile brightens up his face. He spreads his arms wide and turns towards Arjun. "Look, my friend. The Prince of Anga is here."

Arjun notices him and offers him a polite tilt of his head. "Namaste. How may I help you today?"

Vrishasena bows. "Namaste, I was looking for Prince Abhimanyu."

Arjun's face goes from courteously disinterested to downright suspicious in less than a second. "Why?" he asks, far too curtly in Vrishasena's estimation.

Krishna throws back his head and laughs. "These are two young boys in a bunch of nagging kings engaged in politics. What did you think would happen, Parth?"

Arjun flushes. Vrishasena hurries him along. "We're acquainted, Prince. He was gracious enough to offer to show me around."

"Oh," Arjun mumbles. "Try out the kitchens, he's always trying to charm an extra sweet out of the cook."

Vrishasena bows again. "I thank you. Have a good day."

He is quietly backing away when he hears Arjun's stiff reply. "You too. I hope you like Indraprashtha enough to visit again."

2.

Hastinapura's Palace is a veritable playground for his brothers and the Kaurava children. Vrishasena, as the eldest of them all, has been saddled with the unenviable responsibility of minding them today. This, naturally, involves a great deal of screaming and shouting on his part, and a much greater indifference on the part of the children.

"Do not run in the corridors!" he yells after Lakshmanaa, who gathers up her skirts and runs faster. "They have been wiped. You're going to slip! Lakshmanaa!"

Lakshmanaa lets out a shrill shriek as he comes dangerously close to snatching her hand and turns around the corner. Vrishasena's only warning is a muffled "oof!" before he skids around the corner himself, and barrels straight into someone.

They collapse in a heap - him dazed, Lakshmanaa laughing and the man grunting out in pain.

"Oi, you!" says a feminine voice. Vrishasena looks up. A beautiful woman looms over them, dusky face cut through with a bright, toothy smile, eyes sparkling like diamonds. "Please free my husband," she requests, shoulders shaking with laughter. "Warrior though he may be, I fear he will not live long like this."

"Empress Draupadi," he manages, then scrambles over to see which of Kunti's scions he has had the misfortune of knocking over. Of course, because the universe hates him, it is his father's mortal enemy.

"Prince Arjun," he greets, somewhat stupidly, then drags a still-giggling Lakshmanaa off him. "Are you hurt?"

Arjun rubs his forehead. "Apart from my pride? No, I don't think so."

"We're sorry," Lakshmanaa offers, not sounding apologetic at all. "Brother Vrishasena is having a hard day."

"I wasn't the one who knocked him over," he protests, half tempted to wring his hands in frustration.

"You did fall over, though," Draupadi points out, then starts laughing again.

"Where are you going?" Lakshmanaa asks, not even portending to be subtle about changing the subject.

"Your father invited us to a Dyut Sabha," Prince Arjun says, just eager to move on. Humiliation is not a good look on him.

"I hope you enjoy your game," Vrishasena offers, then bows. "Come, Lakshmanaa, let's go."

"Listen, Vrishasena," Arjun calls after them. Vrishsena waves the little Princess away. "Don't tell Angaraaj this happened."

"Lakshmanaa will tell Unc- er- Prince Duryodhana."

Arjun sighs. "Duryodhana has seen lots of embarrassing situations first hand. One more is no gain for him."

"Okay," Vrishasena shrugs. "I won't lie to him if he asks, but I won't tell him on my own either."

Draupadi gives them both a bemused look, but Arjuna nods. "Thank you. That is all I ask."

3.

It has been many years since Vrishasena saw Arjun. The Pandava Prince looks different now. His gaunt face is shielded by a scraggly beard, his hair is tangled and haggard. The finery he once bore with ease now hangs loose from his lean frame. The war and Abhimanyu's death have worn him down, perhaps more than it has worn down Vrishasena.

It is not easy to keep pace with Arjun - fabled archer that he is. But Vrishasena is Karna's son, blessed thrice by love of his parents, of the Kuru clan, and the love of his people. Ten times he pierces Kunti's youngest child, ten times more he goes after Dwarka's King. He fights even as his father and the Kauravas draw close, and Arjun taunts them with the inevitability of his demise.

The sight of him makes Vrishasena stop heckling Bheem. His charioteer tries to steer them after Bheem, but Krishna cuts through their path and draws up in front of them. In the distance, he sees the white conch of his father's flag flutter ever closer. Arjun lifts up his bow in challenge, and Vrishasena thinks quietly to himself, Death has come for me.

He does not have the breath to speak, but he thinks of his father and pleads fervently, Let me fight, let me go, and Karna, whether he hears it or not, stays away. Arjun's arrows take off his arms one after the other, and then take off his head. Vrishasena does not have the time to feel anything but relief.

+1.

Sometimes, Arjun thinks, it is better to be ignorant and live in bliss.

Yudhisthir sits slumped on the ground, head buried in his hands. Draupadi is quiet, eyes turned heavenwards in a blank stare. His other brothers are gathered around, gaping at their mother. Even Krishna is silent and still.

"I want to go home," Sahadev says suddenly, sounding like the little boy he was all those years ago when they made their laborious way from Shatashringa to Hastinapura. The words make Arjun's heart ache.

"We will be going home right after," Kunti soothes, placing a hand on his arm. He had ever been her favourite child.

Now, Sahadeva throws off her hand and turns away. "No!" he shouts, choking on a sob. "I will not go to that graveyard. I want to go home!"

Yudhisthir lets out a strange sound, somewhere between a hiccup and a cough. Arjun looks towards the burning pyres. Karna he cannot mourn - their history is longer than Vishnu's endless serpent and deeper than the waters of the ocean. But he thinks of Vrishasena, Karna's son and his nephew, sprawled on the ground - without arms or a head, and his stomach turns. He thinks of Karna killing Abhimanyu and can feel nothing but rage. He thinks of Vrishasena coming after Nakul, and feels his heart leaden with sorrow.

Somewhere among the burning pyres Vrishasena's body smoulders. Arjun dares not go search for him.