TWELVE
Full, joyful days, Arjuna spent in his father's house in Amravati; and it seemed to the Pandava that the days here were interminable. For, of course, one day and night in Indra's Devaloka are equal to a year on the earth below: the day being as long as a summer and the night as winter. But day and night in Devaloka were not as sharply divided as on earth. It was never entirely light or dark here, but a mixture of both.
It did not do, in unearthly Amravati, to think too long about the wonders of the place, because these were everywhere. Arjuna spent a lot of time with Chitrasena the gandharva and mortal man and immortal Elf became close friends. They roamed the lively streets of Amravati together. The gandharva showed the Pandava other parts of Devaloka also in his own sleek disk of the sky. The fields of heaven, where grasses of spirit-fire grew in echoing colors, the two unlikely friends ranged, with the lustrous winds of the outer reaches plucking at their faces.
Chitrasena also became Arjuna's guru. He taught the kshatriya to play on the delicate vina; he taught him singing and dancing. Arjuna learnt all these with talent that made even Indra marvel. The gandharvas are masters of music and they are masters of teaching music as well. And Chitrasena was among the finest musicians in Amravati.
Indra announced that soon he would have another feast in the palace.
There was a wide field at one end of Indra's palace and here the Deva gave Arjuna lessons at archery: the final touches to a profound education. Day by day, the God imparted the secrets of the devastras to his mortal son and he was delighted at how exceptional a pupil Kunti's prince was. Quite simply, he had never seen an archer like the Pandava.
One day, Indra called Arjuna and they walked together to the end of the interminable field. When they arrived under a tall white tree there, Indra stopped.
"I have given you all the astras I have. I have just one more weapon for you."
Arjuna felt his skin tingle. He knew what that final weapon was. Indra said, "I want to give you my Vajra. Once, I sheared their wings from the mountains of the earth with it; with it, I send forth thunder and lightning into clouds and make the rain fall."
Twilight fell over Amravati and Indra stood revealed in glory before his son. In his hands, he had a blinding ayudha, a thunderbolt of a thousand joints of adamant, pulsing and elemental. Arjuna knelt before his father.
Indra said in a voice that was the rumbling of the clouds of the pralaya, "Son of Kunti, receive my Vajra!"
Bravely, Arjuna held out his hands. A hush fell over Devaloka, as the father placed the awesome weapon in his son's human palms. Arjuna felt no weight, at all, of the shining Vajra; it might have been made of imagination. Then Indra spoke a mantra more ancient than the earth and the Vajra entered the kshatriya's body and his spirit. The thunderbolt of the Lord of Devaloka was Arjuna's: to use in the war he must fight against evil, in the world below, upon the crack of the ages.
The pale and ancestral tree above them, from whose seeds the eldest trees of the earth were once born, was full of deep whispering. A powerful intuition of destiny stirred in Arjuna.