Work Text:
Dramatis Personae
Krishna/Mohini Lord Vishnu incarnate.Friend and ally of the Pandavas, particularly Arjun. In popular mythology, Mohini is often his only female avatar, and is canonically described a femme fatale, "an enchantress".
Radha Adhiratha’s wife, foster mother of Karna
Chorus Royal wives of the Bharata dynasty of Hastinapur: Gandhari, Kunti, Draupadi, Subhadra, Bhanumati
In a ‘different trouser of time’ as Pratchett would have called it,
Lady Macbeth wife of Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor, later King of Scotland. Shakespearen heroine
Glossary of people mentioned:
Vasusena/Radheya/Karna: the son of the Sun God borne by Kunti before her marriage to Pandu, king of Hastinapur. He was found and fostered by Hastinapur’s royal charioteer Adhirath and his wife, Radha.His lifelong friendship with and loyalty to Duryodhana is legendary. He is called Radheya as he is the son of Radha, his foster mother, and Vasusena, as he has the build of a glorious warrior and was born with the protective golden armour and ringlets.
Pandavas/Kaunteyas: Sons of Kunti and Madri, fathered by gods , adopted by Pandu, respectively: Yudishthir, Bheem, Arjun, Nakul, and Sahadev
Panchaali: Draupadi, princess of Panchal
Kuruclan : Sons of Dhritarashtra and their allies
Moon clan/ Bharata dynasty: the ruling dynasty of Hastinapur
PROLOGOS
Krishna: The windswept Kurukshetra has lost its wind
Too many camp to kill
Cramped breathing spaces heave with war
To sate the Kuru will.
No land worth even a needle-point
No land worth Bharata seal
All hide and seek stands over now
We owe war; the elders reel.
Kaunteyas insist they look for peace
In blood they must it seek
I plead harmony in their behalf
And invoke a bloodbath’s reek.
Too many clamour for the Moon clan rights
Too many litter the earth
Too many sins to butcher and knife
A war still has its worth
Petitions and politics must endure
I know who most I prize
To have the Kurus carrioned thus
Let’s call it Divine contrive!
Seven days hence
They broach their arms
The Great War of our times
Where great men fall,
While little ones die
Lost faith accounts lost crimes.
Then let it start, and Odin feast
And warlords crusade for sin
Let blood feud end, and man be bled
Let the purgation begin.
.....
One broken link the pattern has
One mislived live—a woe
One unacknowledged err ratified
And Arjun loses a foe.
Yet
He refuses formal knowledge this late
He’d forsake kin for kith
He seeks no redemption in family seal
For him no parley, no golden wreath.
Not anymore—but glorious waste
Upon our cudgels his burdens rest
He will fight the losing war.
Not for him the elder’s right
The throne, the sceptre, the Pandava might
Even Panchali fades afar.
Duryodhan retains a friend
Kunti’s pleadings, my futile entreat—
Are refuted all in a bittersweet feat—
Karna likes his hemlock neat.
Karna likes his hemlock neat.
PARADOS
Chorus: Tell her it’s a game
Tell her it’s serious
But don’t frighten her
Don’t tell her they’ll kill him
Tell her something about the men
Tell her they are bad at the game
Tell her it’s a story
Tell her they’ll go away
Tell her he can make them go away
By magic!
Tell her more when she’s older
Tell her how many when she is older
Tell her we love him
Tell her dead or alive his family will love him
But not today.
EPISODE 1
[Radha’s bedchamber.Midnight.]
Radha: Lonely I have always been, afraid I am of late.
The outside’s busy breeding a war, the inside emptiness.
The palace comforts fail to soothe
All the maids fail to please,
This can’t be easy, I can’t not worry, kingship is a disease!
Yet ten and five years have passed thus,
Now my son is a seasoned king.
The fight (not always fair, not always just, I know) is near as old as him.
Nursemaids and sweepers whisper anon ‘a rightful war’
My son in the council screams
My grandchildren scream in their sleeps
Their mothers, terrified, poor little things—
Never queenly material , the girls we picked for him
From homes just like ours—
Now look around like haunted pets
In this strange place, this golden cage
While clocks in the threshold gleam.
The friendship’s worth its friendly salt
Yet either one could win
As long as my boy returns safe
To his own kith and kin.
[Enter Mohini]
The hour ’tis late, the household sleeps.
A worried old crone can ramble yet,
Yet, who are you child? What brings you here?
The face is new, my vision unsure
What purpose have thee hence?
Mohini: Brace yourself Mother, the news isn’t good
The omens are at odds.
Anga will need a new king ere this fortnight ends.
I come from powers higher borne
Indeed they embody me
And needst assure this woeful fact
Am word bound to tell thee.
Your son will die a valiant man
But also grossly wronged
The curses invoked, the wrongs steeped
Will work, will rage
While fates wage
While his mothers mourn, his family throngs.
Such is the will, such is his fate.
Such is writ as law.
Radha: Hush child! Worry makes you sour!
Which one of the council is your man
What fears leave you so ill-borne?
Ill words are ill guests.
And you a princess (or so I guess,
Matronly you seem not)
Are you spoken for?
Does your man fight along with your kin?
Nightmares tread all our sleeps’ march
We cannot rest we cannot scar
Or affect our men’s prowess.
Fear not, sweet royal child
They say the war is mighty right.
I hope they’re sure of their words.
Though which war is right I cannot tell
This one might be, they do foretell.
Queen-Mother I have not always been
I have lost close ones in thatched huts—beloveds,neighbours, friends
Whose names they forgot
Yet whose fighting they did need.
In royal stones, you chance best
Your man may remain behind the rest
And tells them what to do.
Thus sleep, rest, return to bed
Keep senses in this strife
Placate you I cannot but trust
Believe in the charioteer’s wife.
Mohini: Your words have the sound of a clear brook, sans flares and fancy, sighs and rust!
Were I what you think I am, you would have left me soothed.
Yet Mother! Little girl! Mistake me not.
Toil and trouble bubble over my shawl, my caresses fates divine.
Some call me Fate , some witchery, some mere Bad Girl
But false I am not.
Terrible I might be to your men, terrible I am not to you.
I hold nothing but the truth; am sad to deliver the anvil’s brute
Strength, but Mother! What I say is true.
Radha: Repeat it then. Mercy I scorn at for the cruelty insipid.
If cruel Fate is indeed my guest, I demand to know the story’s rest.
Mohini:Vasusena, son of Vaskar and Kunti
Radha:
Mohini: Will lead Duryodhana’s troops
And die the twelfth day
Slain by Arjun in an unjust move
While he strives to pull a chariot wheel—his last defence
Against Parashuram’s curse: the gift for stupendous pain,
Krishna’s goading, the killer’s rage.
He will have machined himself by then
And killed a copious lot
Fierce and brute : a Viking’s moot
The Sun God humane wrought.
He will go to the warrior’s heaven
Of that there is no doubt
Yet, this is true
This is how it stands
Mother! Prepare the shroud.
Radha: Why so merciful, dear child?
(For child I will call you yet)
It wrecks my heart
Yet to feign surprise!
Yet wrong, wrong did you say?
My poor boy, oh my poor boy
You are felled ere you rise!
Why do I live to see these days?
Why do I live to know?
How do I right this terrible wrong?
How do I fair this show?
To wish no ambition but a quiet life, but
You would have died yet,instead
While driving great men to their fall
Ignoble death you wouldn’t tread.
Death, though hard, might yet be borne
I am a warrior’s Ma
Yet to see their wrongs, all lifelong day
And see some more at dusk as dawn
Amid empty life and glories shorn
While I live on to see you die
And chariots fail and warriors vie—
Mohini: Yet, the prospect’s not all black
He can be redeemed, revived, reclaimed
Chances are not what you lack.
I have come to you to inform thee
Why? Ask yourself that
Pre-emptives are primitive to man
There’s no end to what a woman can
Reflect, I prithee.
[Mohini exits.Enter Lady Macbeth.]
Lady Macbeth: Hecate I have traced so far, old mother,
‘You seen her? For here she were or felt she were.
Was she here?
Radha: I don’t
Know child. One child was here.
Strange words she left me,
My vision’s unsure
I know not what you call.
Lady Macbeth: Oh remember! Do!
Her prophecies work!
My husband ‘s a Thane, but weak–mettled so
I must seek her, know , privy her
He deserves to be a king!
Radha: Strange child, I know not what you mean—
Hark! Her prophecies work? You have so seen?
She says I may lose my son to wrong,
And wrongful vengeance, battling strong,
Yet she says there is respite
Lady Macbeth: Old mother, then spite
The agents, make her say
For she will surely return this day
(they always do if evoked)
Unlash fury, unlash wrath!
I for my lord, you Mother for your lot
Let none escape the slay!
Hark! I think that’s her!
[Lady Macbeth exits chiming:]
Lady Macbeth: Come to my women’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief!
Radha: Let Gods aid my rusty will, if she can do it
So can I, banal passion decrees love’s right.
Not my blood, ‘tis true, but he is my bone
Radheya will live, despite the fight.
Oh heavens! See me through.
First Stasimon:
Chorus:Don’t tell her he will go forever
Tell her she can write to him, tell her his friends can maybe come and visit
Tell her it is sunny there
Tell her he is going home
Tell her it’s the land God meant to give him
Don’t tell her classes
Tell her his great great lots of greats granddad lived there
Don’t tell her he was once driven out.
Don’t tell her he doesn’t belong there
Tell her of course he likes it here, but he’ll like it there even more
Tell her it’s an adventure
Tell her nobody will tease him
Tell her he is a special man
Tell her about his brothers.
EPISODE 2
[Radha’s chamber.The third quarter of the night.]
Radha: Wearied as never before
Yet I don’t know what to do. Will I, nill I
Call him back?
Radheya loves his mother enough to be called Radheya by the world,
Looked down and laughed by his.
This charioteer’s wife is always obeyed
Yet
Duryodhan has been the fairest friend, the generous brother, the spoilt child
The good prince-regent who has reigned the world for most these years
While Kaunteya brothers roam the woods with their father and alone.
They say he refutes their right to throne,
They are Kaunteuyas, not Pandu’s blood
Not Kuru thereof to claim the throne
He may be right, he may be wrong
But his subjects love him
His family and friends bask
Their protection secured and manned this long.
The protector
Made my Vasusena what he is
What he deserves—king, friend and ally.
How do I ask him to refute such friendship at such an hour?
If they believe the Kounteyas are wrong
(Yet then my boy fights his blood, how’s that right?)
That war is the cleanest, best resolve—
How are they wrong?
What can I do to save their plight?
Duryodhan we won’t refuse.
Not this late an hour shall see
Sweet loyalty retrace back
In shadowed looms, and diffuse
Else I might kill my son!
[Mohini returns.]
Mohini: Mother, you have but one choice,
The Kurus lose: it has been ordained
The Pandavas survive to rule.
For Karna to survive,
He ought join the rightful side.
Radha: How rightful are the rightful, child?
What right makes them proclaim
And write the fates of all our boys
In dreadful, coarse, dead shame?
Lores I have sung as a girl
I know how heroes are defined
The winner of this war will win for all
The defeated vilified.
What right is it that decides how
Which killing is righteously done?
How rightful are the rightful child?
What is this conundrum?
Mohini: The gods support the Kaunteya will
I as Krishna do.
Endorse Karna as Kaunteya and
All other fates veto.
As Kunti suggests, as I entreat
Make him join the Pandava wings
He gets to live, to lead, and be loved by blood
He gets to be the king.
Duryodhan is the better friend, and family’s been obscure
Yet the final choice may save your son
A new mother is the cure.
Radha: Sell him for life? To be Kunti’s eldest?
Mohini: He has always been her first. He gets to live and be glorious and terrible and everything he deserves—so much more than he ever gets from the Kuru clan!
Selfish mother! You want him dead rather than acknowledged by the rightful mother, the rightful clan?
Radha: Rightful Kunti who wronged my son by denying him a name
Too proud too noble to confess a rape, he was wronged in her shame!
He was wronged for floating down to us,he was wronged for calling me ‘Ma’
He was wronged for tasting his clan’s life, and refusing to depart!
He was wronged as a child, at manhood, in youth, for sneaking more from life
You called him a charioteer’s son, when you denied him a wife
He bears mocking though he’s born as high, his blood as blue as you,
His skill, his deeds, his loyalty all lost—true, but never quite true
And now you say the bygone’s past, the breach be met for gain
His Kaunteya roots hold true at last, so that a Kuru mayn’t reign?
Mohini: But he gets to live, and live gloriously a perfect life.
Relegate your claims Mother! Let the errors be rectified.
Ask him to join the Pandavas, ask him to lead
After defeating his former benefactor he gets all that he seeks.
You may see him reign in his own right, as the rightful owner of states,
You may see Draupadi wife him at last, besides her Pandava mates.
Step aside, let Kunti in, help him to be great
‘A charioteer’s son’ is too petty a tag
But act fast! You’re running late.
Radha: Everyone knows how my son was born.
Yet no word was uttered aloud.
You choose today to end your whispers
For the sake of your beloved clout!
You don’t tell the rest of the Kounteyas either.
You keep them in ignorance, out of sin.
With such allies as you, no wonder
Their righteous souls are clean
Too late a justice, too many errors are done
Too many scars remain
My boy will never abandon the Kuru clan
Sorceress! Don’t invite such disdain!
Mohini: You can make him, I can help.
You want your son alive.
And don’t forget,
If he lives, he lives
A happy man, sans strife.
I will return once yet
At dawn to you,
But that will be the last
Post that, the prospect’s black
I can help, but you ought act fast!
[Mohini exits]
SECOND STASIMON
Chorus: Tell her not to be rude to them
Tell her not to be frightened
Don’t tell her she can’t play with the children
Don’t tell her she can have them in the house.
Tell her they have plenty of friends and family
Tell her for miles and miles all round they have lands of their own
Tell her again this is their promised land.
Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people
Don’t tell her they had to burn a forest and bribe a demon
Don’t tell her I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.
Tell her they will win
Tell her his brothers are heroes
Tell her how big their armies are
Tell her they are fighters
Tell her he will be fine
Tell her maybe we can share.
Don’t tell her that.
[Radha’s chamber. Dawn.]
Mohini: Decided Mother?
Shall I invoke the spell?
The will of Gods can trick.
Radha: What a night!
For a crone, what a night to sneak!
Yet, child, don’t you like the dawn
There, you can see my son!
He meets his father there
While the blinding light the world shuns—
Mohini: Mother, won’t you act?
Radha: No.
I am a silly old charioteer’s wife
Too lowly for the likes of thee
Perhaps thus I have lost my grim
I won’t lose this, this quiet joy, even if
I see my son laid,
Return child, I will not decide
That decision’s made.
It’s the wrong choice, perhaps it is
But no righteous choice exists
For me, I’d rather die
Than trick him into what he resists.
Mohini: And you won’t change your mind? My tricks fail Mother, I can’t act for you.
Radha: Don’t.
[Enter Lady Macbeth.]
Lady Macbeth (to herself, sleepwalking): Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why,
then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?--Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him...What, will these hands ne'er be clean?--No more o'
that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with
this starting.
Radha: Bewitched?
Mohini: Bewitched.
The trick is simple Ma, I just tell them what may come. They do the rest.
Radha: I won’t.
Mohini: I know.
Radha:It is but a few days more that I get to see him smile
I get to see him walk the court
While my grandchildren trail behind
I get to see him eat, to talk
I get to hear him speak
I get to see him be alive
Before the days grow bleak
I can touch him now and smell his sweat
I can recall his follies in style
While the children laugh and the wives relax
My son smiles at my wrinkled rile.
A few more days and I lose him,
I lose him anyway
Whether he is the Pandava king
Or has had one too many to slay
In a few days time its war for him
The war he is bound to lose
And die, so many boys will die
No hangman owns his noose.
He will leave, but the loss will stay
No shame should make it smart
I might as well see him happy his way
Before the war march starts.
EXODUS
Chorus: Don’t tell her anything she doesn’t ask
Don’t frighten her
Tell her they want to drive us out
Tell her they don’t
Tell her we will kill far more of them
Don’t tell her that
Tell her that
Tell her we are stronger
Tell her we are entitled
Tell her they don’t understand anything except violence
Tell her we want peace
Tell her we are going to pray.
Tell her only a few of us have been killed
Tell her we protect what is good
Don’t tell her how many of them have been killed
Tell her they are terrorists
Tell her they are filth
Don’t
Tell her we killed the babies by mistake
Don’t tell her anything about the army
Tell her, tell her about the army, tell her to be proud of the army. Tell her she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves. Tell her I’m not sorry for them, tell her not to be sorry for them. Tell her we’re the ones to be sorry for, tell her they can’t talk suffering to us. Tell her we won’t stop killing them till we’re safe. Tell her I don’t care if the world hates us, tell her we are better haters, tell her we are the chosen people, tell her I look atthe mourning women in the street and what do I feel? Tell her I feel happy they needn’t enter her house. Not yet.
Don’t tell her that.
Tell her we love him.
Don’t frighten her.
-/-