NINETEEN
All night, until dawn lit the horizon, the quiet Deva stayed with Kunti in the hut. How different he was from the fiery sun, but just as overwhelming.
The next morning Pandu and Madri returned. Pandu riveted his wife with a gaze full of one question. When she turned her face away shyly and whispered, "I am with the Lord Dharma's child," he gave a shout that rang among the trees, as if he himself had fathered that child. All his melancholy vanished and never raised its head again the rest of his days.
Kunti was radiant in her pregnancy. Pandu and Madri pandered to her every whim, whether it was for sour mangoes or for a fish from the river. One day, when all the planets were configured in harmony1, Kunti's labor began and she gave birth to a boy of uncommon serenity. As soon as he was born, he gazed back at his mother with calm, knowing eyes.
His heart bursting with joy, Pandu took that calm infant in his arms. An asariri, a disembodied voice, spoke out of the air, "Pandu's first son should be named Yudhishtira, for he will be steadfast even in war. He will be the image of truth on earth and he will rule the world one day."
1. The time of Yudhishtira birth is given as the eighth muhurta, called abhijit, noon, of the fifth day of the waxing moon, in the month of Kartika, when the moon was rising in the nakshatra Jyeshta.
A year went by, with the blissful father and his wives absorbed in the growing child. One day Pandu took Kunti aside and said, "These are dark times and Yudhishtira will have need of brothers, especially if he is to be a king. We must have a second son to be his support: to do his bidding, to love and to serve him."
Kunti gasped. "You want me to invoke another Deva?"
"There is no sin in it. Heaven is all awhisper in my heart, telling me to have another son. They say we must have a boy of unrivalled strength."
Kunti flushed. She could not deny, which mortal woman could, that the temptation of a Deva's vertiginous embrace was hard to resist. Since he spoke of strength, she guessed which Deva her husband wanted her to summon this time. The mere thought of that God made her quail.
"Pandu, I am afraid. Being with a Deva is more than any woman can bear."
"I will take Madri and Yudhishtira away to the rishis' asramas. Invoke Vayu now, he is the strongest Deva. Great Hanuman, who carried a mountain through the sky to save his Rama's life, was Vayu's son."
What she had feared was true: it was the Wind her husband wanted a son by, to be Yudhishtira's brother. Pandu said gently, "Think of the future, Kunti; think of Yudhishtira without a brother in this treacherous world. If he is to be a king, he will need more than friends to protect him."
She bowed her head, acquiescing. How could she tell him she needed little persuasion to invoke the Deva, that the very thought of lying in the arms of the tameless wind made her blood course? But she did say, "Let me go to higher reaches of the mountain. I fear our asrama may not contain Vayu Deva when he comes. Besides, I cannot be with him in the same house we live in with Yudhishtira."
The weather was clear and fine and Pandu agreed. Kunti did not mention that she had felt shame even the last time, when Dharma was with her: shame, because it was herself she could not contain. If she must be with a God again, she would rather it were in a place in which she did not have to live, or ever return to.
Well before the sun set the same day, she set off by herself for the higher mountains above Satasringa. When she had climbed for an hour, she came to a depression between some large rocks. The view of the setting sun from here was spectacular. He, her lover once, bathed the white massifs all around in melting bronze and scarlet, ethereal violet and burning pink. The wind already swirled through the gorges, restless and powerful, as if that Spirit knew why she had climbed here and was impatient for her. She thought he caressed her with wanton fingers of air.
As the sun sank over immense ranges, Kunti settled herself in the declivity. The crags around her had stood like sentinels through lonely ages. The seasons and centuries had taken slow toll of them, with snow and sleet, rain and blizzard, warm days and icy nights. As the last ray of the sun broke across her face and the wind plucked at her hair that she had left loose, Kunti said the mantra Durvasa had taught her. Today she said it aloud, calling Vayu the Wind God to her.
Suddenly, all the zephyrs and breezes stood still, breathless to hear those words. It seemed even the sun paused at the rim of the world, startled to hear the familiar mantra, now said to summon another God. To Kunti, holding her breath, it seemed an age passed of that surprised stillness. Then slowly, a tidal whispering of airs gathered in the sky. It spread around her in a tempest, until it whistled above her, below her, blowing from everywhere. Storm winds lashed the mountain as if to uproot it and blow it away.
Kunti shut her eyes in terror and again, the stillness and silence. She sensed a flickering brightness in the growing dark and opened her eyes. Night had fallen. But before her stood an irradiant being, his body made of spinning airs. His hair, flowing back from his shining face, was a storm contained. His smile was glorious and the look in his eye entirely wild. She shook with fright: his presence was not a comforting one as Dharma Deva's had been, but one of tumultuary excitement, as when the Sun God stood before her.
She could see through his face and his body. He was a world of intense whispering, always restless, full of the strangest news of undreamt-of lands and seas across which he blew in a million breezes and winds, gales and cyclones, covering the earth. She stood rooted by the vibrancy of him.
At last, he spoke to her with surprising softness, "Don't be afraid."
Perhaps she moaned in reply, because she was speechless. He knelt quickly before her and, gathering her lightly in his arms, flew away to a luminous cave set high on a golden mountain. From there, he showed her some of his secrets. He showed her visions of the earth—how it was day somewhere else, always fleeting, like the wind and how the round world turned steadily.
He gave her an ambrosial drink that calmed her and soon Kunti felt easier in his company. She found him affable and gentle, though he was unnerving as well. When he had won her trust in the lofty cavern and she did not tremble any more but wondered what it would be like to be in his gusty arms, he reached for her in the starlight.