My Days in Mahabharat

My wife

Often I collide with Duryodhan when he is in a fowl mood. He fumes in anger as if it will burn him alive. Though to me it sounds like, gushing water poured on hot coals. Searing.

He is the villain, but that is too big a word, so I call him a morally grey man. Almost everyone is, I am. Arjun is too. Duryodhan has flaws and some of them turn out to be fatal flaws, like his undying thirst for the throne and sensitive ego, more sensitive than a girl's clitoris.

His body isn't turned to iron yet but as I stumble in him, it is hard like a rock from the mountains, very similar to the ones which arrived for the choosing of his royal sculpture from voracious marbles and sleek sandstones.

"What the f-ruit!" I grit and look up to find the son of Gandhari blocking the source of sunlight filtering the corridor from the east, devil's ivy crawling and embracing the pillars as if stuck there from eons.

"Why you? Always? Move now" Duryodhan heaves, clearly despising my existence with him under the same roof. He rakes his fingers in his hair, a shade of autumn leaves fallen on the pathway.

"You move! You came in my way!"

"I'm not in a mood to argue with you, my brain is so knackered! Make way"

"Because I'm a woman? Why should I give you way? You make way!" It is justified to loose my sanity in this era when at every instance I find women shut by men.

"Why do come around and put everything with being a woman? I am certainly not asking you to move because you are from the different sex. I command you to move as the king of Hastinapur" He makes gestures with his arms, prodigious ones to assert his commands. Golds made malleable and gilded as the form of serpent on his body, gleaming in the dusk sheen.

I am silent for a moment, no retort comes to this self proclaimed silver tongue and I am even on the verge of saying in mind I give you for this repartee King, but I don't say it. Instead, I fold arms on my chest, an action Vrinda says makes me appear intellectual and daunting.

"So the king of Hastinapur has no regards for a lady, I presume"

"Do not twist my words and trap in your cruel silver tongue woman!" Duryodhan presses his hands on my shoulders and moves me aside, striding past like the gust of biting cold wind.

His silks are crumbled, not very ideal for the evening court assembly he is perhaps heading towards in the haste of a leopard, barging in and toppling any vase which comes in his way. The copper amphoras blind my eye as the golden hour rays kiss them. On other days I would've not invested myself into the haughty prince's fiasco, but this evening he appears completely raged as if a gullible part of his is escaping from his every gesture.

"What is so wrong with you, always? Every time I see you, you are wildly fuming and angry and yelling?"

Duryodhan halts, and I can be prophetic here to list his every following action without even his attempt. He curls his fingers in his fist, knuckles going ivory. Then the prince shall charge towards me in his fury, make endeavors to intimidate me, and leave not before having a debate of bitter words. I have come to believe that his venomous discourses with me satiate him, and I may have even eavesdropped on him saying that verbal spars with me keep his intellect in check.

But this dusk isn't in my army because the haughty Duryodhan I envisaged, metamorphoses. Instead, he is the juxtaposition. He turns, drooped shoulders, crimson face, weary eyes and treading towards the vegetable garden in his quarters, he sagged on the iron swing. Although one of his arm is lavishly straightened on the rim of the swing and other hand's fingers are drumming on his knee, I am in a consternation to detect, a glaze in his eyes.