The Daughter of Laughter

I sit on the railings of the balcony and rest my back comfortably on the latticed window that curtains the balcony. I stretch the bottom of my lehenga to cover my thin ankles. I want to watch what is about to happen in this great hall. And in style, too. This would be the high point of my otherwise uneventful existence. I rest my right arm on the trunk of the elephant that forms the capital of the pillar below the balcony. From here, I can see it all without worrying about being seen. As is the case with those hiding themselves behind the latticed window to watch all that happened without revealing themselves.

Today was not an ordinary day, even by the standards of this great hall. It would be a day of transformation. A day, when Time would stand still, and watch as His course is remapped. A day when my own life, short as it has been, would reach its climax. But no, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let me tell you about myself. I was born a half day’s horse ride from here. Sometimes, I think I was born only because the ride was so short. Cousins had invited cousins to show them their newfound prosperity. And cousins had come to see what the hype was all about. Everything they found was beyond their wildest imagination. The place they were invited to was nothing short of a palace. And what a palace it was. Almost magical, it had a stream flowing right inside the household. And if that wasn’t enough, it had a variety of illusions to heighten the sense of mystery about it. Doorways disguised as walls, waterfalls to curtain windows, flooring polished so smooth that it would reflect the dancing lights on the ceiling and appear to be water, and pools in the floor so charmed to appear as solid stone. Built by a clever architect, it served its masters well. But it also proved to be the undoing of, should I call her my mother? I think I should. It also provided the womb for my birth, for without it I would never have come to be.

It was a bright, sunny morning. The Kaurava princes, still dizzy from the frivolities of the previous night, were strolling around the palace. They had been invited for the Rajasuya Yagna of the newly crowned Chakravarti, Yudhishtira and had decided to stay back. Long story short, the palace had decided to play with them and the solid floor Duryodhana stepped on, melted under his feet. The next moment he was in a pool of water, royal garments drenched and his crown bobbing like a cork next to him. Duryodhana looked around to see if anyone, apart from his brothers and Karna, had seen his rather disgraceful fall. To him, it did not matter that his crown jewels were swimming in the middle of the room. He wanted his pride to be intact. And it emerged, from behind the curtained windows. A laughter. Loud, derisive and encouraging a chorus of other voices to laugh along. Draupadi! The greatest maceman of the world had had it. It wasn’t enough that he had failed to win her over in the Swayamvar. It wasn’t enough for her that she had insulted his friend Karna. It wasn’t enough that her husbands had built the most splendid palace out of nothing. She had to be there to witness him in a rare moment of disgrace and laugh at it. And that was when I was born.

As I gathered form out of the resonating sounds of Draupadi’s laughter in the corridor, I saw another cloud collect around Duryodhana. His rage created a boy of my age and build, but crimson red to my dark form. I immediately understood. He was the son of Duryodhana’s rage just like I was the daughter of Draupadi’s laughter. We were siblings of Time. But being born of different parents, we looked quite different. I was dark, like all children of Karma, and resembling my mother. I grew up in her palace, quite fast for my age, for in the days and months that followed, Draupadi had repeated the tale to all who would hear. Their laughter nourished me quite well. I think the son of Duryodhana’s rage was also fed well. Duryodhana must have been reminded frequently enough of his humiliation in the presence of “that woman”, by his uncle Sakuni.

Oh! Here he comes! Invisible to the eyes of mortals, I am what he instantly he sees. He makes a beeline to get to the balcony railing. He is about the same height as I am. Well, a little taller, I think. But I can’t be sure. He sits right next to me. This is the first time I’ve met him after our birth. We have a lot of catching up to do. And by the looks of it, there’s not much time for us to do that. The day’s events seem to be starting. I ask him how his life has been. He tells me how Duryodhana had fed him continuously, with able support from Sakuni and Dushasana. He says he’s ready for the task at hand. I wonder what his task is. I already know mine. But wait, the hall is being readied for the day. I see servants of the palace arranging the seating and the cushions in the middle of the hall. Ostensibly, to show his gratitude for being invited to Indraprastha, Duryodhana had invited his cousins, the Pandavas, over to Hastinapur. As was tradition, gambling was part of the invitation. Yudhishtira, addicted as he was to gambling, had gratefully accepted.

The boy tells me that Duryodhana is on his way, after ample planning. Sakuni is going to play on his behalf. I inform him that Draupadi is in the womens’ chambers, resting after the trip. She will not be present at the court for another three days. Or so she thinks. I cast a meaningful glance at him. He has already told me what has been planned. It fits perfectly with the plan I have in mind. Our duties were charted out for us the moment we were born. This was the day we would fulfill them.

The events that followed passed in front of our eyes as a blur. We did not pay too much attention to them. This had been planned already. Sakuni’s dice implicitly obeyed his will. Yudhishtira started losing minor possessions and went to on to stake his ornaments, chariots, bullion, and even his kingdom. And lost them all. Each round that Yudhishtira lost, the generous Sakuni offered him a chance to win it all back in the next round. And Yudhishtira only lost even more. In what appeared was a final attempt, not because Yudhishtira had the good sense to stop, but because he had nothing more to lose, he staked his own brothers. And lost them one by one. He then lost himself and came to the conclusion that all was indeed lost. All this while, the elders of the Kuru clan sat around and said nothing. Bound by Dharma, my friend sitting next to me, pointed out. Yudhishtira wasn’t forced. He was doing it all of his own freewill.

Duryodhana was quite pleased. The palace that had humiliated him was now his. Part of his humiliation was now avenged. But the other part still remained. The vile Sakuni reminded Yudhishtira that he still had one possession left. “Draupadi!” prompted Karna avenging his insult at the Swayamvar.

Duryodhana would send his foot soldiers to bring Draupadi over. They would return, not with her, but with questions. The enraged Duryodhana would send his brother, Dushasana, to drag his new “maid” to the hall. I am ready. So is my partner. This is our cue. He takes my hand in his. The red of his and black of mine make vividly contrast. We slip from the railing and part hands. I float towards Duryodhana to fulfill my destiny. As he inhales me into him, out of his mouth comes the laughter that once belonged to Draupadi. Oh! And here she is! Being dragged by hair into the hall by Dushasana. I smile when I see that she’s wearing a single piece of cloth the color of vermillion. The contrast of the cloth on her dark skin, reminds me of my brief flirtation with my partner. But no time now. Duty calls.

The hall divides itself into muted cries of anguish and loud eruptions of laughter. As I flow through Duryodhana, he turns to Draupadi and calls her his “Dasi”. He boorishly proclaims that since her numerous “husbands” have failed to protect her, she should know seek refuge at his feet. Draupadi’s Karma floats through Duryodhana’s veins and his arm moves his lower garment from his thigh and taps it visibly.

I can see my partner rising within Bheema, the mighty Pandava. Bheema’s voice booms through the hall. He swears to break open that thigh of Duryodhana which he had offered to seat Draupadi on. As she begs the elders and her own husbands to save her honor, my partner and I are lost in our thoughts about each other. As I grow out of Duryodhana, he grows out of Bheema to embrace me. It is at that moment that Duryodhana orders that Draupadi be disrobed. What follows is of no importance to us. We are lost in each other. Out of our incestuous copulation cushioned by the silence of the helpless elders, is born an ugly cripple. His first vision is of the kulavadhu Draupadi being disrobed in the great hall of Hastinapur. Dushasana’s effort goes in vain as the more it is pulled away from Draupadi, the longer the vermillion garment grows. My son leers at us. He points to the Draupadi’s garment and then points at the Kauravas. Does he mean that it is Kaurava blood that is flowing in the hall? I wonder. I watch as the ugly cripple Revenge, the son of Karma and Rage, enters into each Pandava and Draupadi as they inhale him deeply.

Our task complete, my partner and I dissolve in peace. We are no more affected by the events that are about to happen. Curses and oaths shall follow. So shall a war and the end of an Age.

Shadows

The door opened inwards, revealing a dark room. Almost dark. The harsh yellow light from the corridor intruded upon the darkness and discovered that it was not alone. The shadow that lay on the floor belonged to the man at the doorway. His eyes scanned the room. The eyes of the shadow did not. He looked towards his left. A window. It was shut. He noticed that light from the streetlamp was leaking into the room through a hole in the window. He did not notice that this light fell on the shadow. It formed a spot where the chest of the shadow would have been. The dust trail it lit made it appear like the shadow had been shot and the bullet hole was still smoking.

The man looked around the room. For some reason, he felt satisfied. “It is as it should be”, he told himself. The light behind his head flickered and died. A sense of foreboding washed over the dirt of his satisfaction. Something told him he was not wanted here. A moth which had until now sat on the light, flew past him. “Your delusion is over for now”, he told the moth. He turned around and started walking down the corridor. The light came back to life. He did not turn back to see the door remain open, or that the hole of light on the canvas of darkness was still smoking.

He noticed that there were moths buzzing around all the lights in the corridor. It was the rainy season after all. Instinctively, he reached for his trench coat and his hat as he climbed down the stairwell. The alley was deserted. The rain was struggling to decide if it should come all out in its fury or if it should wait for a more opportune moment to give the city its long needed bath. “And God knows this city needs a bath”, he told himself. “Ha!” he chuckled. “If Murphy still holds as true as he has been in my past, the minute I remove my coat, the rain should start.”

He probably did not want the rain to start, for he held his coat close and continued walking. Further down, the alley extended its life by merging with the broad avenue. He turned right and walked on. Without asking for, or needing directions, he took the third right, entering another alley. This was narrower and packed on both sides with garbage dumpsters. “If only I had Moses’ staff”, he said, to no one in particular. “I would have cleared all this in a minute and paved a road to the Promised Land.” He stood outside the third door on his right. It was locked. He shrugged his shoulders and whistled a familiar tune.

“Meow!” “Hmmm, stray cats. This town was never short of them. Oh! How we used to fight, the stray cats and I, all for the fish crumbs that fell from the windows. Except for the mewling and the occasional secretive sex, I was a stray cat too. Would things have been different had I stayed a stray cat? May be I would have found a job cleaning windows, a wife, a family. Ah! How different would things have been!” The noise of his contemplation drowned out the sound of a whimper that interspersed itself with the mewling.

As the waves subsided within him, his ears tuned themselves to the whimpering. He moved closer to where the sound was coming from. There, between two dumpsters, trying to squeeze herself into the gap between them, for shelter and warmth, was a young girl. She must have been 12, but a stunted frame, the product of years of starvation and living off the streets, made her look 7. Her eyes, resembling that of a kitten’s, were equally full of fear. She cowered deeper into her imaginary cave, as though that would protect her from the full grown man who was standing in front of her.

“Oh, you street rat! Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.” At this, she appeared unconvinced; as if that wasn’t the first time she had heard the statement and had been subjected to the opposite of what it meant. He saw that in her shivering hands she was holding a fruit knife. “Now why would you have something like that? Here give it to me. There, there!” When it seemed that his words were not having the intended effect, he presumed that any further effort would merely be rebuked, although with a knife.

He rose to his full height. The girl peered beyond him to see if there was a way she could get out of this. He removed his trench coat, with an apprehensive glance at the overcast sky. “Here’s something to keep you warm”, he told the girl as he offered her the coat. She was unsure for a moment. A bony hand shot out, grabbed the coat and disappeared. He bent down again, took the knife from her, and put it into one of the coat’s numerous pockets. “Don’t play with such sharp objects. You don’t wanna hurt yourself in this place” he told her. As she examined the coat, he looked again at the sky. Murphy was being kind, for the moment.

“May be it is a sign”, he said out loud and continued walking, whistling the same tune, as if the entire point of this sojourn was to hand over his favorite trench coat to a random urchin on the streets. He was back on the avenue and for reasons unknown, started walking eastward.

“Leaving town, are we?”, a non-ominous voice asked from within himself. He nodded as if in agreement. On his left and right were buildings that were familiar to him. Some of the buildings even belonged to him. He had eaten and drank at some of the restaurants that lined the avenue. At others, he had puked, and made harsh love to strange women, willing to do his bidding so they could go back to smoking whatever they smoked. 

He had been walking for over an hour now. The night was on the verge of overstaying its welcome and was being pushed out by an inhospitable sun. As the curtains of rain disappeared, he saw Tom, old Tom, on his knees. Tom was blind. Old and blind. He would sit on the sidewalk with his hat in front of him. Whenever he heard footsteps, he would push his hat in the way of the footsteps, so the harried passerby would drop a coin or two, after which Tom would pull the hat to its original position. An oft-repeated joke in the neighborhood was that Tom’s hat would have moved enough number of times between the two points to travel the distance to the moon and back. And now, Tom was on his knees, scratching the pavement. “What was he doing?” Then he noticed. All that back and forth massage Tom gave the pavement had eaten off the fabric of his hat. It now had a hole, big enough for blind Tom to peer through. After his day’s business, Tom had lifted his cash box and it had emptied itself on the road.

“Oh Tom! What will you do now with your hat gone?” the man remarked. He walked towards Tom and looked down the pavement. The coins, bathed in the early rains of the previous night were now glinting in the rising sun. He picked up the ones he saw, in his left hand. With his right, he removed the hat from his head. He put the coins into the hat.

“Tom! Tom! This way! Ya. You know me, yes? Here, take my hat. I don’t need it anymore. It has your coins from last night. Oh no! It’s alright. You don’t have to thank me. Just do me a favor. Give me that old, tattered hat of yours, so I know you will use this one.” He took Tom’s hat and tried to wear it. The much bigger hat made him look slightly comical. It fell through his head and covered a part of his forehead. He patted Tom on his back and walked on.

The sun was rising. He was walking towards it. The tune he whistled, along with Tom’s hat and his jolly stride made him look like a happy tramp. He continued to walk down the still empty road. The sun was rising and drying up the insufficiently laundered town. As he walked with stars in his eyes and the wind on his tail, he did not notice that there was no shadow trailing his step.

The evening papers of the day carried his mugshot and an account of his deeds. Ironically, they missed the last night and had spoken about several other nights. The headline read,

“Notorious Mob Boss Found Dead in His Room.

Police Suspect Gang Violence.”