FORTY-FIVE
Kunti and her sons kept much to themselves and lived by begging for alms. The people of Ekachakra took readily to the quiet youths and their mother; but those town-folk were not fools. They met together and said, "These are no itinerant rishis, but high-born kshatriyas. Perhaps they are in flight from some danger."
"Yet they are not arrogant, nor do they condescend to us."
"Their devotion to their mother is wonderful to see. Let them remain among us for as long as they want."
Though the people of Ekachakra accepted them warmly, anxiety was never far from the Pandavas' minds. They would go out for alms in the morning. How alien to their royal natures this begging was, it made them humble and taught them about the world. As soon as their begging-bowls were full, they would not delay a moment but hurry back to Kunti, lest any of Duryodhana's agents wandered into the little town.
Often with tears in her eyes, Kunti would divide the food her sons had begged. Bheema would always get half of everything the brothers brought and the rest was shared equally among the others. And they were not unhappy, though for Bheema the food was never enough and he grew rather lean.
Nearby there lived a potter who became friendly with them. He grew especially fond of Bheema, who helped him carry loads of hay; he was sad to see the young giant waning from not getting enough to eat. This potter was an intelligent man and something of a comic. One day he arrived at the Pandavas' door with a begging-bowl he had made for Bheema, three times the size of an ordinary one.
The next day, Bheema went begging for alms with his outsized bowl. Giggling to see him with the huge thing, the women of the town filled it to the brim, some of them with amorous looks at the strapping brahmana. Then on, those women began to cook a little more food and the big brahmana would oblige them by splitting firewood or doing heavy work around their houses. He was careful not to become otherwise involved, despite all the subtle and flagrant invitations he had almost daily. Some mild flirtation was harmless enough and Bheema did not deny himself that pleasure.
One morning, just Bheema and Kunti were at home in the brahmana's house, when they heard loud sobs from the next room, where their host lived with his family. Kunti raised a finger to her lips: the brahmana and his wife were crying.
Kunti had grown very fond of the man, his wife and their two children: an older daughter and a young boy. She came to listen at the closed door that divided the brahmana's house.
She heard him say, "Curse this treacherous world! Curse this life, its roots are only torment and misery. Woman, years ago I said to you let us leave this accursed town. You answered that you were born here and here you would live. And now…oh, now death is upon us and there is no escape."
His wife said, "Death is certain for all that are born. Don't grieve, I will go in your place."
Her husband gave a louder cry still. "How can I sacrifice your life for mine?"
"The rishis of old have said that women should never be killed. If the devil won't hesitate to kill a man, he may not kill a woman. I have borne your children and my nature's deepest needs have been satisfied. Death holds no terror for me, I will go to the rakshasa."
Hearing the word rakshasa, Bheema sat up in the next room. Now the daughter of the house, a girl of twelve, ran to her parents, hugged them and wiped their tears. "My brother is just four. He will die if either of you leaves him at this tender age. The son of a family is its soul and the soul must be nurtured.
Let me go to the rakshasa. You are more precious to me than my own life and I will feel no fear or pain."
All three clung together and sobbed. Then the little boy stopped his thoughtful game in the yard. He was a tousle-haired, beautiful young fellow. He ran in and lisped, "Don't cry."
He held a long blade of grass in his hand. Brandishing his green sword, screwing up his face in the sweetest snarl, he cried, "I will slay the rakshasa!"
The other three hugged him and began to laugh. Kunti walked into their room. She said, "I couldn't help overhearing you. You spoke of a rakshasa and some terror he held for you. Share your grief with me, perhaps I can be of some help."
The brahmana sighed, "Alas, we are beyond help. For this week our turn with Baka has come."
"But tell me anyway: to share a burden is to make it lighter. The least we can do in return for all your kindness is to listen to the reason for your sorrow."
"Devi, your heart is kind, but death has come and knocked at our door today. Yet, as you say, to share a burden is to lighten it. So, listen to our story if you have a mind to.
Our first misfortune is that our king is an imbecile—inept, weak and callous. The second followed upon the first, thirteen years ago. The rakshasa Baka came down from the northern ranges and found a dry cave to his liking on yonder mountain.
It was a terrible day when Baka first descended on Ekachakra. He came like Yama. He killed anyone he could, drinking their blood, flinging half-eaten corpses around him. Then he went back to his cave and slept for a month. Again he awoke, hungrily and came roaring down on us for a feast.
When he had come and gone a dozen times, our elders met together and decided to go to Baka with a proposition. They climbed to his cave and said, 'Great Rakshasa, we have come with an offer. Every week we will cook a cartload of food and send it to you. In return, you must promise not to attack our town.'
Greed stirred in Baka's eyes. He was lazy and, besides, he loved human cooking. Yet, he loved human flesh and blood better. In chaste language, the rakshasa said to the elders, 'Your plan is excellent, but I have some conditions. The food you send me must be tasty. And each week I will eat the bullocks and the driver of the cart, as well.'
The elders stood trembling: any moment Baka may tire of talking and fall on them. They quickly agreed. 'Each week, a different household will supply a cartman and bullocks. But Baka, there is one other matter: as long as we send you the food, you must agree to be our guardian. Not only must you never come yourself into our town, you must protect us from any other danger.'
Baka thought about this for a moment. He said pityingly, 'Have you no king to look after you?'
'Our king is wanton and an idiot. Ours is a cursed generation.'
'Very well, if I enjoy the food you send me—if it is not too spicy, or too bland—I will protect your town. Be sure the bullocks that draw the cart are fat and the rice you heap on it forms a hill. If I am still hungry after eating what you send me, I will come to Ekachakra. Go now and send me a cart of food this evening.'
Thus we began to feed the rakshasa every week and had his protection in return. Each week a different household provides the cart, the bullocks and the cartman."
His face like ashes, he whispered, "This week the turn is mine."
Kunti listened sympathetically. The brahmana continued, "Devi, if I take the cart to Baka and he eats me, my wife and children will starve. If my wife goes in my place I will die of grief and my children will be orphans. So we have decided all of us will go and die together."
He paused and his eyes were full again. "But despite all the philosophy in the world, life is sweet and the thought of dying dreadful."
The brahmana fell silent. Now Kunti said brightly, "Brahmana, you have been kind to us and the time has come to repay your kindness. I have five sons. I will send one of them, the second one I think, to Baka with the cart of food."
"Oh no! You are my guests. How can I send your son to die in my place? Devi, don't add to my grief."
Kunti smiled at her host. "My second son is not an ordinary boy. Trust me, I am not sending him to his death. My child was born blessed by the Devas." She leaned forward now and whispered, "He has superhuman strength; he will kill Baka and return safely. You prepare the food and the cart and leave the rest to my boy."
The brahmana and his family listened round-eyed. It seemed they had come to the brink of death and been reprieved. Kunti said, "Just one thing. You must never reveal my son's secret to anyone, or he will lose his strength."
After a moment's silence, the brahmana said, "If what you say is true, this is a miracle. If you are sure your son will come to no harm, we accept your offer. Not a word will pass our lips about who went to Baka with our cart."
Kunti went back to Bheema and told him about Baka the rakshasa and how she had offered to send him in the brahmana's place. He hugged her.
"Thank you, mother! I have felt so restless here and now I can have a good fight again. More than that," his eyes shone, "the brahmana's wife is an unearthly cook and tomorrow I will have a cartload of her food to eat."
Kunti laughed to see he was drooling. "Come, let us give them the good news."
The brahmana embraced Bheema and blessed him a hundred times. Bheema was embarrassed and said to the man's wife, "I hope your cooking is as good as ever, or I might change my mind."
Tears in her eyes, the woman said, "I swear you would never have eaten food like you will tomorrow. I am going to begin cooking now and I will make a meal fit for a prince."
Kunti and Bheema exchanged a smile and went back to their own room. Almost immediately, the other Pandavas returned with the alms they had begged. Yudhishtira saw Bheema sitting in a corner and looking very pleased. He took Kunti aside in the yard. "Bheema has the look he used to get whenever he was planning some mischief against Duryodhana and his brothers. Do you know why?"
Kunti was washing the vessels from which they ate. "This time I've begun the mischief myself."
"You?"
Kunti made him sit beside her on the stone steps. She told him about Baka and the brahmana's plight. She told him she had asked Bheema to take the cart of food to the rakshasa the next day.
"What?" Yudhishtira's face was red: for the first time in his life, with anger at his mother. "Have you taken leave of your senses, O my mother? We escaped through the tunnel only because of Bheema. We have come this far just because of him; and now you want to send my brother as an offering to Baka? Oh, Kunti, you have been terribly impulsive or you wouldn't have dreamt of such a thing."
Kunti took his hand, but there was an edge to her voice now that pulled him up sharply. "Do you think, Yudhishtira, that your love for Bheema is greater than mine? Do you really imagine for a moment that I would sacrifice a son of mine to a rakshasa? It does you little credit that you think your mother is a stupid woman.
My Bheema is Vayu's son. You were not there when I conceived him. When he fell from a cliff, as a baby, the rock on which he fell was smashed and he didn't have a scratch on him."
Yudhishtira already looked chastened. Kunti had not finished. "Bheema drank nagamrita when Duryodhana pushed him into the river and it made him even stronger. You saw how he carried us through the jungle, how he killed Hidimba, even when your brother was tired.
Yudhishtira, none of my sons was born to die at the hands of an insignificant rakshasa. They were born to rule the world beside their eldest brother, who seems to have lost his wits for the moment that he judges his mother so harshly. I was only trying to repay the brahmana's kindness."
Yudhishtira knelt before her. She took him in her arms and his eyes were full that he had hurt her. She wiped his tears tenderly, saying, "I don't blame you, my son, this furtive life is wearing us all down. But we have a long way to go before we return to Hastinapura."
Yudhishtira went to the brahmana and said, "My mother told me about Baka. I am happy we can help you, it makes our time here fruitful."
Their host was pensive. "Tell your mother she can still change her mind. I do not want your brother to die in my place. You don't know Baka, how strong he is."
"No mother would send her son to his death. You do not know my brother; he is stronger than you can imagine. Don't fret needlessly, the rakshasa will die tomorrow."
After working all night, the brahmana's wife finished cooking an hour before sunrise. When, at cockscrow, Bheema, Kunti and the others came out into the yard, they saw the brahmana loading the last of the food on to his bullock-cart. Bheema's face was a sight as he sniffed that hill of rice, covered thickly with mouth-watering curries.
He cried, "I must be off at once! What if Baka grows hungry and comes down the mountain?"
Without further ado, Bheema mounted the cart. With a crack of his rope over the bullocks' backs, he set off as the first flush of dawn lit the eastern sky.
Soon he passed the edge of town and was alone with the cart of food. As Bheema urged his sleepy bullocks toward the forest-mantled foothills on the horizon, he helped himself to the food. He ate with relish, occasionally singing the cook's praises to the lightening sky. He sang she had the most gifted hands in the world. Her spices were delectable and how she mixed them into her curries was sheer sorcery. Her rice was the longest-grained and the most fragrant in Bharatavarsha and so on. Enfolded in the aromas of the good woman's cooking, transported by its flavors, Bheema went slowly along. It was months since he ate such a meal and he did not hold back.
Suddenly, he had a thought that made him shudder. When he arrived at the mountain, looming ever closer now, he would have to kill Baka. Then he would be unclean with the rakshasa's blood and he would not be able to finish the food! Bheema stopped the cart. He tethered his bullocks to a tree and really fell to.
For an hour or two, the Pandava sat gorging himself at his ease, as the sun rose into the sky; and once, did he imagine it, or did he hear a rakshasa's hungry roar far away? It did not bother him. When he had finished three quarters of the hillock of food, Bheema felt drowsy. He gave a ringing belch of absolute contentment and lay in the shade of the cart to catch a brief nap.
He awoke in an hour, feeling better than he had since he last ate in the lacquer palace. Climbing back on the cart, he urged his bullocks forward, to their surprise: they had thought he wanted them to go slowly, the slower the better. Now Bheema was hungry for battle. Shouting at the bullocks that they were laggards, he stood up on the cart-head and whipped them on smartly. They flew across the flat land, arriving sooner than they liked in the dark woods that grew around the base of the mountain.
A dirt track, disused once Baka began living here, wound its way through the trees and up the gloomy slope. Bheema set his bullocks on that trail. The poor beasts would rather avoid this menacing mountain; after climbing a short way, they stopped obstinately. The Pandava realized he would have to carry them if he wanted to go on.
The careen from the place where he had last eaten had made him hungry again: just enough to polish off half of what remained on the cart. With a sigh and a brief curse at the bullocks, Bheema climbed down and tied them to a sturdy tree: so they would not bolt with the rest of the food, at the first sign of the rakshasa. He climbed back on and began to tuck in to what was left of the rice.
For a while he ate ruminatively, thinking that only now, at his second foray, could he really taste the nuances of the marvelous cooking. As he demolished the last quarter of the rice, savoring each morsel, he began to call out to the rakshasa.
"Baka!" bellowed Bheema, as he ate, "O Baka, come for your meal! The cart from Ekachakra has arrived, the bullocks and the cartman are here!"
Nothing stirred. Bheema continued to eat and, intermittently, to call out the rakshasa's name. Some time passed and then the bullocks grew terribly restless. They tossed their heads and lowed, looking fearfully at the thick woods and the mud trail. Bheema ate on, with never a glance over his shoulder. Between mouthfuls, he still sang out Baka's name from time to time.
The birds in the trees had fallen ominously quiet. The woods had grown perfectly still. The bullocks were frantic. Their eyes showed white with panic, as they tried to break the rope and escape what they sensed in the dimness behind Bheema: the thing that had crept up on huge feet and now stood glaring at the cart with burning eyes.
This was how Baka always received his cart of food and the cartman. He enjoyed stalking them, as a cat does a lizard. Baka was enormous. He made Hidimba seem mansized. His head was in the trees, as he stood quite naked and motionless, only his strange phallus twitching with the lust of the hunt. He saw what Bheema had done to the food. The rakshasa's hairless body quivered. His crimson organ subsided like a distraught serpent and rage replaced excitement in his tiny eyes.
Bheema first became aware of Baka by his stench, borne on the breeze like a pall of death. Breathing through his mouth until he grew accustomed to that stink, Bheema continued eating. Baka gave a low growl and stepped out of the trees. He was covered in dried blood and his own filth. He wore a necklace of skulls and bones of the men and beasts he had eaten and a crown of vultures' feathers. His hair hung below his shoulders like a woman's and he had woven jasmine flowers into it. He was a bizarre sight and the bullocks nearly broke their necks to get away. The rope held.
Baka padded up behind Bheema and stood glowering, his pale face pinched in fury. At last, thinking to frighten the human glutton out of his wits, Baka gave a louder growl. The poor bullocks danced in fright. Bheema did not turn around. He ate on: the last of the food he was meant to have brought for Baka.
The final mouthful down, the Pandava belched again. He yawned and stretched. Now Baka cried in his high lisp, "Dare you eat my food?"
Wiping his mouth, Bheema turned around. Baka saw the human was unafraid and that his eyes glittered disconcertingly. Bheema said coolly, "Just look at you, Baka. You are so like the rakshasas in my mother's stories that you could have stepped out of one of them. You are fat and useless with living off the town. Why, you could not hunt any more if you wanted to. I think, Rakshasa, that you are fat enough for killing. Though you stink so much, that not the vultures and jackals would like to feed off your carcass."
With a screech, Baka aimed a blow at Bheema that would have torn any other man's head off his neck. Bheema let it land on him, while the bullocks bucked and bellowed. The rakshasa's blow did not so much as knock Bheema over.
With a howl Baka ran off and wrenched up a tree. Roaring like ten tigers now, he hurled it at Bheema, as his kind do when they fight each other in jungle-hearts. The wind's son raised an arm and the tree smashed into slivers against it.
Fear gripped him now and Baka roared louder. Never had he encountered anyone of the puny race like the specimen before him. He pulled up more trees and flung them at the Pandava like spears. By now the rakshasa frothed at the mouth as terror drove him mad. Laughing in his face, Bheema also began to pull up trees and cast them back playfully at the demon.
Baka saw Bheema's body grow bright; his sinews were made of eddying airs that rippled with the power of Vayu who wears down mountains. Baka thought he saw Bheema big as the sky, laughing at the rakshasa that he dared challenge him.
Quickly, the place where they fought was denuded of its trees. Bheema's laughter grew louder and Baka's roars and screeches more desperate. The naked devil's black blood flowed, mingling with the filth in which he was caked. When the last tree was too far to reach, with the longest howl yet Baka turned into a pack of silver wolves. Bheema struck them with a sapling as if he was beating a dog and yelping, Baka resumed his own form.
By now, he had no hope the dreadful human would flee. He rushed at Bheema, as he might rush into the jaws of death. Bheema seized him and snapped his spine like an elephant would a cane of sugar. Birds flew screeching into the air at the report and the rakshasa's dying scream.
The bullocks had fallen silent, knowing with sure animal instinct that their cartman would prevail. Now he came to them and they nuzzled against him. Then there were other sinister presences in the woods and the bullocks grew restive again. Bheema saw a knot of smaller rakshasas, Baka's people. They had watched the battle and were in dread of Bheema.
He cried fiercely, "Leave this mountain or I will kill you all!"
He took a threatening step toward them; they fled howling and never came again to those parts.
Flushed with victory and all the fine food on which he had gorged, Bheema hauled the rakshasa's broken body to the cart and lifted it on. He turned his bullocks around and pointed them back to Ekachakra. As they trundled along, Bheema leant his head against dead Baka's thigh and he was soon snoring under the westering sun.
Night had fallen when Bheema arrived in Ekachakra. He stopped the cart at the edge of town, rolled Baka's carcass off and left it at the city-gates. Quietly, he went back to the brahmana's house. His mother and his brothers hugged him; the brahmana and his wife fell at his feet.
Bheema said to the brahmana, "Remember, don't breathe a word to anyone."
Kunti had hot water ready for her son's bath. As he went in to it, he turned back once more. With a grin, he said to the brahmana's wife, "I hope we don't have to wait for another rakshasa before I taste your cooking again."
He went in, bathed and then fell asleep, digesting the awesome meal he had eaten like some python. As he slept, he smiled in a sweet dream of the food. His mother and his brothers sat watching him fondly for a while and then they slept too.
The next morning, a commotion broke out in the sleepy town of Ekachakra, when someone found Baka's body at the gates. The town-folk soon discovered whose turn it had been to feed the rakshasa and they thronged the brahmana's house. They wanted to know how Baka had died.
The brahmana said, "Yesterday, I sat crying with my wife because it was my turn to take the cart of food to Baka. Suddenly a young brahmana came to me and said, 'Friend, do not grieve. I will take the cart for you and, what's more, I will kill the rakshasa.' He assured me he was far stronger than any rakshasa on earth and I need have no qualms about letting him go in my place. Sure enough, this morning my bullocks and cart had been returned and Baka's body lay at our gates."
All that day there was singing and dancing in Ekachakra and offerings to the Gods. No one suspected who the rakshasa-slayer was. The Pandavas continued to live peacefully in their grateful host's house and Bheema frequently had the most inspired dishes sent him by the brahmana's gifted wife.