Aftermath: The outlasting Krishna-Arjun journey

ℙ𝕣𝕠𝕝𝕠𝕘𝕦𝕖

For a month, the five Pandava brothers stayed outside Hastinapur.

It was said to be carried out to purify themselves, but Arjun, presently sitting atop a branch and staring unblinkingly over the landscape, was quite convinced they could never purify themselves of the sins they had committed.

Who was he fooling, though?

It was not 'they' who could not cleanse themselves. His older brothers could, his younger brothers could, for they had fought in a war against enemies and slain enemies.

Arjun, on the other hand, even if one forgot how he had debilitated his own grandfather and stayed silent witness to a treachery to kill his teacher, had slain his blood brother with his own hands.

He glanced down at his palms. He could almost see the bloodstains on them.

The King of Anga's blood.

Karna.

Karna, the charioteer's son, had proclaimed himself Arjun's arch rival on a long ago day in his youth, challenging him to a fight in front of an audience, claiming his competence superseded caste. Arjun had felt no hostility, then. Soon afterwards, however, Karna allied himself forever with their loathsome cousin Duryodhan, which shut all doors to Arjun's childish hopes of a friendship with a brilliant archer.

The years had piled hatred upon the initial dislike.

A sore loser in Panchal's princess's swayamvar, Karna had been part of the mob attempting to kill Arjun and his newly won wife. In the shambolic gambling match, Karna had called her a harlot and demanded her to be disrobed. In a war to defend the Matsya kingdom, Arjun had killed Karna's brother.

Then the Battle of Kurukshetra came, and they naturally took opposite sides, and naturally fought to kill each other, the two archers, so powerful that none but the other could kill them.

Arjun emerged the victor.

And then their mother broke the news.

'Offer him water, my sons, for he was your firstborn brother, my son by the Sun.'

They had not got over the shock of Kunti's appalling story when Yudhishthir acted out.

"How could you commit such a sin, Maa?" he had asked with rising hysteria. "If the King of Anga was our brother, he should have had all the rights we did. If we had had the chance to be his brothers--nothing could have stood in our way. There would have been no war, no deaths. By hiding your firstborn, by not claiming him, you have condemned us to a fate of sinners."

Kunti had not attempted to defend herself.

"Shame on you, Maa!" Yudhishthir, who never lost his temper and never shouted, had done both that day. "Shame on you for keeping such a secret. May no woman be ever capable of keeping a secret in the future!"

"Jyesht," Nakul had said. "Don't curse the entire race of womankind, jyesht--"

Yudhishthir had been quite beyond reason. "Why not, when a mother's secret unknowingly made us commit fratricide? It was on my orders that our brother was killed--what of me? It was Arjun who carried it out--what of him?"

But Arjun had been strangely devoid of rage. Where did jyesht's rage come from?

Where did any emotion come from above the knowledge that Arjun had killed their own brother? There was only numbness in his heart.

"Let it be, jyesht," he said mechanically. "Don't malign Maa, I am sure she had no choice."

"How could she not have had a choice?" asked Yudhishthir. "Why could she not have told us?"

And then it got worse, for it turned out that his eldest brother had known, before the war, of the truth. And yet he had found it worth for them to fight a battle to death.

He had found it worth to leave his younger brother to live with the knowledge that he had killed his blood.

Arjun's own palms seemed drenched with red now to him.

No, there was certainly no hope of purifying himself.