DaanveerPutri

Pritha's Pari (Part I)

"Karna!!!" cried a lone voice as an elderly woman sat up straight on the bed, with unkept hair and scattered sheets around her.

As the endless tears streaming down her cheeks turned into full blown sobs, Raja Maatha Kunti struggled to hold on to sanity before being whipped away by another mental breakdown. One, two, three, she couldn't keep count anymore. She could not remember how many emotional breakdowns she had suffered from since the closure of the battle. Since her Karna's death.

Struggling to catch a breath of fresh air, Kunti stumbled out of bed, knocking down a vase on her bedside table in the process. She maneuvered her way through her chamber, occasionally bumping into artifacts arranged to provide a beautiful décor, as she rushed towards the balcony. Her hands tightly gripped the metal railings as she took deep gasps of air, trying to not only fill her lungs, but clear her mind as well. With a heart-shattering sob escaping her lips, Pritha let herself sink to the cold floor as she rested her head against the bar.

She was no longer complete, as she had sacrificed a part of herself to the battle that stole the lives and peace of many. Her Karna was gone. Her first born. A son she failed to acknowledge to the world, till his last remaining breaths. She had lost him in the battle. And the miserable part was that she had knowingly lost him. One mistake. One mistake was all it took to turn her life upside down into a living hell all her life.

It was another rise of dawn in the kingdom of Hastinapura, as a young adolescent girl stood alone at the banks of the Ganga River, offering her salutations and morning prayers to the light of her lineage, Lord Surya Narayana. It has been a couple of years now since the great Mahabharata battle. She felt herself unloading any traces of worry or burden in her heart along with the water, which she poured from the small brass kalasha in her hands into the waters of the Ganga as she worshipped her forefather. Standing directly below his emanating rays of light, Mitra felt at absolute peace, as if he were smiling down at her. She knew her father was up there above, with Surya Narayana, and both fathers were watching with joy, the flower of their lineage now blooming in the Kuru dynasty under the care of the Pandavas.

A brand-new day for all of Hastinapura, but yet another day of being prisoned in the past for the Raja Maatha of the kingdom. Kunti found herself walking along the shores of the Ganga, as she usually did every morning before the rest of the palace woke, to be left alone in her thoughts for some time. Like every other morning, her lost gaze fell upon the outline of the young princess from a distance. Standing at the banks of the Ganga, holding the kalasha of water as an offering to Lord Surya, Mitra brought forth her father's memory. This image took Kunti back to the days before the great war, where she would silently observe Karna stand at the exact same place, completing his morning prayers to the Sun, oblivious to the fact that he was being watched.

This place was not only the site which filled her aching heart with some joy by seeing her eldest son, but it was also the place where she had broken his precious heart into pieces with the truth. Kunti closed her eyes and let her mind take her back to that bittersweet day where she had finally come clean with the truth to her eldest son, while simultaneously breaking his trust in her.

"I have been near you for so long now. So many years. Why have you chosen to reveal the truth to me today, and not earlier, Raja Maatha?"

Hearing him address her as Raja Maatha and not "Maa" wounded her heart to a depth that she believed was not possible. But she knew she deserved it. She deserved to bear every bit of his hatred and despise. What kind of a mother would abandon her newborn, and further fail to acknowledge him as her son after meeting him years later?