Skip to main content

Vaishali is marginalised




Fiction

Vultures descended on the kingdom.  People had started dying of hunger and thirst.  There was no water anywhere.  Aridity stared at us from what were rivers and lakes until a few months back.  The nudity of the rivers and lakes encroached upon our consciousness like bloodsucking vampires.  It sucked life out of us.

“Anga needs a saviour,” King Romapada lamented.  My mother listened to him sympathetically.  “We need a beautiful young maiden to go the forest and…,” he paused a while as if to clear his throat, “… and seduce Rishisringa.”

Rishisringa was a young ascetic living in the forest with his father Vibhandak Rishi.  He was himself an offspring of seduction.  None other than god Indra had sent Urvasi, the enchanting celestial dancer, to tempt Vibhandak away from his ascetic vow of chastity. The gods were jealous of the spiritual powers Vibhandak was accruing from his chastity and austerity. 

The gods are strange creatures.  They have everything they need and yet they are not contented.  They vie with the lesser creatures on the earth. 

Vibhandak’s chastity swayed as Urvasi’s statuesque curves undulated to the thumping melody of the cosmos.  In the due course of time Urvasi dutifully gave birth to Rishisringa and with an equal sense of dutifulness returned to her heavenly abode to entertain the gods there with the undulation of her curves, leaving her son behind with the father.  Vibhandak brought up his son without the remotest possibility of meeting any seductress.  He made a protective ring around his island with his spiritual powers.  Wild animals would pounce upon anyone who dared to enter the island.  Even the boulders on the mountains were ordered to hurl themselves on intruders. 

Rishisringa grew up without ever knowing any female of his species. 
Without the possibility of knowing love.  Love had no place on the sage’s island.  Rishisringa was to grow up as the most austere ascetic who would challengethe gods.  The rishis are no less strange than the gods.

“The royal priest says that only Rishisringa can bring the rains to Anga,” King Romapada said to my mother in a very unroyal whisper.  My mother was used to Romapada’s hushed whispers.  She was one of the many concubines to whom the King had spoken in whispers in the darkness of the royal chambers as the bed creaked under the weight of their mating bodies.  I was the King’s daughter, one of the many he had in the kingdom. "Vaishali has a unique charm," I heard the King my father tell my mother.  "She's just the right person."

“You are making a prostitute out of me,” I protested when my mother asked me to go to Vibhandak’s island and seduce his ascetic son. She was teaching me the art of seduction.

“It’s a golden opportunity for you, girl,” my mother chided me affectionately.  “When the heavens open and the showers descend on Anga, just imagine what the King will do out of joy.  Rishisringa may be the next king.  Or at least a part of Anga will be given to him.  And you will be his queen.”

“Rishisringa’s chastity may be the actual cause of this drought,” I said.  The people of Anga had diverse opinions about the cause of the drought.  Most people thought that the King was responsible for it.  When a king becomes immoral, the heavens punish the country with drought.  When I heard about Rishisringa and his father, I thought they were the cause of the drought because they lived such a sterile life.  Their sterility must have spread to the land.

“You are going to put an end to that sterility,” my mother said.  I accepted the challenge.  I dreamt of being a queen.  Vaishali the Queen!

It wasn’t easy to reach Rishisringa.  We had to dodge the rocks that fell from the mountains as we entered his island.  We had to hide ourselves from the wild animals.

Rishisringa first thought that I was an animal, a new one.  He looked at me with curiosity.  I smiled coquettishly.  He touched me.  The touch became a caress.  I could feel sterility being washed away. 

I led him towards the boat which was waiting.  He walked with me like a bewitched man.  When he fondled my breasts I could see rain clouds gathering in the distant horizon.

As soon as Rishisringa put his foot on Anga’s soil, the heavens roared.  The lightning was followed by a cloudburst.  The people of Anga danced in the rain.  I too stood in the rain for a long time while certain ceremonies were going on in the palace under the guidance of the royal priest.

Then came the news which shattered my heart. 

The King had arranged Rishisringa’s marriage with princess Shanta. 

I am a prostitute, nothing more.  The King, my father, used me just like he used my mother earlier.  I am a mere tool in the hands of the King.  A mere tool.  An object.  The rain continued to pour down.  So nobody saw my tears.




Comments

  1. Haha... Well, it's worth to be used than rust out. Also, there are many who can't be used at all. Well written Sir in your typical style. Loved it :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, after all she did a great service to her nation. But human emotions as well as hopes are complex.

      Delete
    2. As I observed, she didn't do anything for the nation but for herself. She invested in her dream to become a queen but her investment sank. It's her choice. After all, investments are subject to market risk.

      By the way, the concepts of nation and religion don't go well with me. They are tools in hands of few to tame the mass.

      Delete
  2. Ain't there a contradiction at the end to her feeling which got changed from being a saviour to the kingdom Anga to victim of patriarchal society? I question her emotions at playing the victim card which pseudo feminists play most of the time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Isn't there a bigger contradiction in using a woman's seduction to bring the most chaste man to the country? Well, I just used one of the many versions of the epic tale. I think our present regime is also specialized in marginalising people after using them.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...