Hastinapur
Sojourn in Mahabharat and simply in a sleep is not correlative. Colossal epic and it's grandeur is unparalleled with all pulchritudinous factors and ways. Therefore, there is not a chance for noceur as me to soak myself in a deep slumber.
Marking the ochre stained page ४०० of the book titled Nakshatra, borrowed from Sahdev which I had so eagerly packed in my two weeks stay luggage of Hastinapur, that one dried and pressed bloom of quartz bloom germanium is used as a bookmark.
The flower recently bloomed in those flowering garden of Indraprastha and I habitually had collected it for my pressed flower art hobby, in a spruce wooden box gifted to me by Queen Gandhari.
"Could not think of an ideal present for an artistic girl such as you but this. It already has some dried pansies and I am sure you will fill it with more" she had said to me before I departed with my family to once snake infested land, Khandavprastha.
Therefore, saving the reading leisure for my time, I decide that night stroll in the gardens of the city of Kuru's shall be an ideal alternative. Albeit the autumn humidity, twilight rouses the pink chills of the coming winters, so I embrace myself with an amaranthine velvet shawl Draupadi had packed assertively and I could not help but thank my solicitor.
Breezes are throughout the dimly lit corridors cascaded in a crimson glow as the abendrot flames of the sooty diya dance on those sandstone walls ageing from years. The guards bow to me which I deny them to do so and walk ahead crossing my arms and engulfing the shawl on my upper body tightly to not allow the natural warmth any escape. The cloister with a quadrangle opened to the garden.
The winds swirl in the ashok trees and wafts the air with the scent of lilacs creating a soft hue purple carpet under her dainty white as snow feet as she grazes the fallen petals with her toes. Her gold anklets with a hexagonal emerald at each loop rings in the harmony of the night crickets. I am always taken by the woman I am watching before me oblivious of my presence.
Something in me, be it my intrigue or my civility, I dare to not indulge of my disposition in her soliloquy.
The comely princess is an epitome of pulchritudinous. The fair as milk complexion of hers is glimmering in the illumination of moon which glows in the glory of his full bloom. Seamlessly she moves her svelte fingers on the parchment residing in her lap. Her roseate as a hibiscus petal lips moves audibly and her neatly shaped brows clench together then rise with her emerald green eyes glazing in an exultation. When the breeze intensifies its harsh endeavours to steal parchments stacked on the tawny circular table, she gets annoyed. Housing the quail's quill in the red vermillion-charcoal inkpot, she stoops to collect them and her black as pitch night curly tresses in a loose braid slips from her slyphlike waist.
"Simran? What are you doing idly in there slouched behind the raspberry bush? Some insect might infect you, come here"
This is when Bhanumati, or I must say Bhabhishree Bhanumati sees me not hiding but refraining myself to not disturb her. I smile at her and peer over the teal tinctured bush harbouring burgundy berries in a bloom and in buds. Sometimes, I so wish that I shouldn't address her Bhabhishree, for I am satisfied with Jahnvi and never had a strong wish for a brother. Unequivocally if ever having a brother, he wouldn't be as Duryodhan.
"Just harvesting some ripe berries. I- its such a nice weather. Not so warm and not so cold. Are you writing?" wrapping my amaranthine velvety shawl on my arms and sogging a few raspberries in my hands I walk towards her who is like a pearl. Then I spill the truth with a sheepish smile.
"All lies. You are so beautiful as such that artists might battle to paint you, running with their brushes and the canvases towards you. I just didn't wish to disturb you in your solitude"
I watch her emerald eyes with the heavy black lashes curling with the creases, widening of her contagious smile as she chuckles handing me a few parchments bound in red yarns. "I have seen you reading enormously not only whiling away your time but ardently. You are always writing in your journal. Will you read them?"
Minuscle gold ornaments of intricate mosaics in ensemble of maathapatti, earrings and a gold chain which is never devoid from her embellish her. The silks in the same hues of the lilac flowers at the background and below her feet is cladding her curvy body and a velvet shawl in maroon with canary hemline warms her. Anticipation is dripping from her gesticulations.
I skim my fingers over the pages resting the handwritten parchments on my lap. The ochre stained pages are claimed by the handwriting of the literary god's blessings, each of the letter of the devnagri script is neat and calligraphic in fashions. Poetries, prose and journals.
Daydreams of a maiden, the damsel of Kalinga who is in confinement both metaphorically and literally. The only daughter with an army of handmaids but not one to confide in except those poems she composed as a blossoming belle.
Some day a prince shall be a revival,
a spiritual awakening of my muses.
His tresses as the strokes of sunset, when he shall consume me from his mahogany eyes they will crease as mosaics of moon.
"My pearl" he will address me and daresay I shall be encased in his oyster shell thenceforth, forever.
Resfeber of a betrothed woman to the submission of life, a tribulation of that tournament said swayamvar. Was it her choice from the alternatives? A mock and laugh of the woman's soul of destiny. She is not the supreme authoritative of the power, not of choosing her life partner.
Void. The chamber of darkness. Abyss.
I am a corpse. A black stain. A stigma. To the woman, who could not even choose her soulmate.
But can I choose my soulmate?
I was in those arms which must have been of my muse.
Awaiting the imposed-Agreement. Concurrent.
Trouvaille of the sojourn. The better half of an antagonist, of his melange. Being the wife of someone termed as a heartless and malicious. Elevation and banishment of breathing and a heartbeat sink. Chastity. Question it is to ponder and introspect.
Muse.
Zephyrs flirted with his tawny tresses, as gleaming as the strokes of dusk.
He smiled with creases as mosaics of moon on his illecebrous mahogany irises when I curled my toes.
"My pearl" he breathed and left me without invading the barriers of proximity.
"I shall wait for the day you will love me for who I am" he said and I sunk in dunes of the rising revival.
A pearl was born in an oyster.
Yearning of a passionate and ardorous goddess. The burning in her core and sizzling warmth in her vein, all in the vain. She is fair and white but is benumbed.
Your pearl is in peril.
Implanting pearls in pillows each night.
No not the pleasure but pain,
of pining to learn my name.
My pearl you would say and that was millennia ago,
for I am lost in the sea because I am left behind and you are gone.
"These are autobiographical"
If there isn't her sanguine voice to pull me out of the trance, I must have been in the realm of hers forever.
Oblivion.
The word is her summary. The colossal epic stays oblivious of her presence and she is too oblivious that she is a naive woman. Perhaps, I am wrong or I am right. I didn't know. I needn't know.
"You believe I am naive?" She asks.
I am numb. She is a visionary. Telepath is she for she hears my mind. I don't even fathom. A drop of pearl sheds on the parchments of hers from my eyes.
"I am not naive. Neither I am a seeker of sympathy nor a woman without-sentiments" she says with a smile.
"I feel like I'm not worth of-I feel as if I'll betray you. I don't mean to-read them because y-you chose me-Me? Why?" I question her, wiping off my solitary tear. There is a sangfroid in her and I am unfathomable on her account.
As if I invaded her bower of solitude.
Bhanumati takes my hand in her own. They are satiny as a milk, in texture and complexion, cold and yearning. I listen to her stable heartbeats, the pulse on her wrist. She is a lake of philosophies or she is just alone.
"I have an unknown affinity with you. I write because none have the spare to listen to them. Arya listened to me and he was as a robin bird. He will fly away and I shall be his nest. I must be his redemption someday and I have learnt it in four months of our marriage. You are from a distant land from time in future. Birds leave their nests and very rarely those twigs are remembered by the future"
For a moment my soul proclaims an announcement. Bhanumati must be remembered by the future as known as they were, called as the wives of Pandavas. Future must know of the wife of a Kaurava. And I shall be the narrator. Who will believe me? Who will accept that I traveled back in time? Who will know that Bhanumati was the good of and in him, Duryodhan?
"Just your cognizant is ample dearest"
The serenity of her is like a pearl. I cannot refrain myself from thinking her as a pearl; pious and precious. A treasure which only Duryodhan has. Mayhap he is her muse, because if he is virtuous and protagonist or a saint, there will not be the lake of philosophy in his life. So I just say and it was what I discern afore.
"You are a pearl"