In that wretched killing field,
Where eighteen akshouhinis perished,
Whole races and dynasties were wiped out,
Even an embryo in the womb not spared,
He was one of a mere ten who survived-
And how they all wished they hadn’t!
How did he, a Dhartarashtra,
End up on the Pandava side?
Was it jealousy, hurt and resentment,
Or a burning need to prove himself?
Born of a low caste woman,
To a king who was only looking for an heir,
Hardly could he have shared
The royal hubris of his half-brother,
The crown prince, and the rest of the hundred,
For whom power was its own validation.
Never did he fail to see right through
Their hollow, self-serving rajadharma.
An intruder at the high table to the scornful brood,
The troubled conscience of the Kurus he remained.
A conscience the patriarch could easily stretch,
Or turn his blind eye to for his progeny’s sake.
Born on the same day as Duryodhana,
Next only to Yudhishtira among all the princes,
Had as good a claim to the throne as any.
The Kauravas came by it by default,
Little right the Pandavas had to carry that name,
None of whom had in his veins the blood of the late king.
Knew he had no place in Duryodhana’s court,
For he had no reason to hate the Pandavas.
Willing to settle for five villages,
They were denied even a needlepoint of earth.
Generous to a fault was Duryodhana though,
To anyone who served his pride and glory.
Gifted Karna the kingdom of Anga.
To advance his private war with Arjuna.
Made family, kin, and friends to choose,
Splitting asunder ties of blood and loyalty.
Love over justice, chose his doting father,
Spurning the counsel of Bhishma and Vidura.
Let victory go where justice goes, said his mother,
Every time he sought her blessing, every day of the war.
Sakuni, the evil-scheming uncle he trusted,
The virtuous Vidura, his father’s half-brother he scorned.
In the warrior’s code that Duryodhana swore by,
Sanctioned by none other than Brihaspati,
Self-interest was a king’s supreme goal,
To secure the throne his sacred duty.
Winning was all, end justified means.
Women were trophies to be won,
Fields for the royal seed,
And chattel to be owned or wagered.
When Dushasana dragged Draupadi by the hair,
Stripped her in the assembly of kings,
And Karna, all but called her a whore,
No code, no hero rose to her rescue,
No Kuru elder to answer her moral question,
On which would hang the fate of their race.
The high-souled Bhishma equivocated,
Yudhishtira’s lofty virtues looked hollow,
And Vidura’s pleas fell on deaf ears.
When justice spoke, it was through a Kaurava;
Vikarna condemned the foul deed unequivocally,
And the shameful silence of the royal assembly.
It’s Brihaspati’s code that won the day:
When war came by its inexorable logic,
The mighty kings across the land,
Cast their lot with one side or the other,
Seeking warrior’s glory in all three worlds,
Troubled little by questions of right and wrong.
Vikarna too, surrendered his conscience
To family greed and loyalty to the crown.
When the armies stood facing each other,
Two heaving oceans about to swallow the shore,
Weapons clamouring, flags flying in the wind,
Skies darkened by the dust from chariot wheels,
Bowing down to his uneasy conscience,
Yuyutsu walked across to the Pandava side.
Samantapanchaka was once again filled,
At the turn of another epoch, with blood,
Not in another caste war of vengeance
But a family feud for a mere five villages.
Claimed to be a war for righteousness,
As it wore relentlessly on for eighteen days,
All lines of right and wrong were obscured,
Every dictum of the warrior code violated.
Unconquerable heroes felled by deceit,
By vile stratagems and low trickery.
No side covered itself in glory, none untainted,
No dharmaputra, no purushottama, in the end.
No one was all evil, not even Duryodhana,
All fallible, tragically, helplessly, human.
In that blood-soaked, corpse-strewn field,
Where vultures and widows’ wails filled the air,
Yuyutsu surveyed the desolation and pondered,
On the bitter end of his and many a life’s endeavour,
The moral duplicity and vainglory of war,
Its futility, with never a winner, only losers.
He couldn’t help a smile at the irony of fate,
How he, a renegade son of inferior birth
Was now the sole heir to the Kaurava name,
The one to keep alive the storied bloodline.
Madras Courier originally ran as a broadsheet with a poetry section. It was a time when readers felt comfortable sharing glimpses of their lives through verse. If you have a poem you’d like to submit, do email us at editor@madrascourier.com.
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