Go in peace,Rukmini

Wait Rukmini, before you step into the pyre, alive with fiery orange flames, consuming the dark body of the man we both loved. Wait Rukmini, for I am Radha…

But…I am not going to join you in the last leap into raging flames that will snuff out lives as if they were a candle. How many queens are lined up here today, Rukmini, to take that last leap into eternity? How many of them? And most of them did not even know the man but are waiting to perform their duties as good wives and queens.

Wait for my story, then decide whether you will take that leap. Many of you are still young, with babies, mere toddlers on palace floors, those of you do not need to end your lives because of vows you uttered not many moons ago…

But why do I make Rukmini wait? See her, still every inch a queen, her sad eyes fixed on my face…her expression –questioning…

Her eyes so sad, so lost, so desolate- so much of what I am not, so much of what I do not feel because of what happened took place many aeons ago when the world was young and our limbs had the life blood of youth – so many doubts that need to be cleared before taking that last journey.

For Rukmini, you have to cross through flame into the next world following Krishna. To you I will not speak of vows, wife and queen through many years, to you I will answer that question which your eyes ask and your lips dare not….to you I will answer, what then of Radha?

Or how can Rukmini be where there is or was Radha?

 

 

For I died, didn’t I? I hung myself from a tree when Krishna left me, his love of many years, for a kingdom and other women….I died and all the other women in his life have hungered to know about the myth of laughing Radha, wife of another man and beloved of Krishna’s youth – the Radha that died for love, hung on the branches of a dead tree.

Ballad makers have a lot to answer for…For see , I stand alive in front of you, a living woman, no frail legend. I stand here to answer you, Rukmini, for you have suffered the most of Krishna’s women. It is for you that I have come, old though I am.

Have you suffered the most? I am forgetting, it is the curse of age. There was one who came after me and before you, lacking my brilliance and your beauty. One who had all your devotion and none of my carelessness …it was she who hung dead from the branches of a tree.

Your marriage was founded on the lost love of a dead woman. But she was not me…

Listen then, Queen of Mathura, to the memories of our youth in Gokula and Brindavan. Listen then and clear your mind of doubts and questions…

 

 

I married young, as you know. A tribal princess, spoilt with the world at her command, I was married to Ayan Ghosh at the age of fourteen. I was quite happy in the beginning. I loved, yes I loved my husband who was much more serious and older than me but I hated his mother. And sisters.

They were terrible. One was a widow and one a spinster – suspicious, quarrelsome, jealous of their brother and me. I suffered but not in silence. That was never in my nature. I drove my husband into hell and he retreated…he should have confronted me.

He should have confronted his mother and sisters…we should have left then. Instead there was Krishna.

You see, it was inevitable. I was bored, thwarted and angry. My husband was immersed in his work and my in-laws were always on the rampage. But they all loved Krishna- he had a charm even then, even over cross old hags and busy men.

And as the first older woman he had seen, I fascinated him. I saw it happen and I did not draw back.

And so there were musical interludes by river banks, hasty meetings here and there, connived at with friends, a scattered romance, scattered on river boats and green fields…

 

 

My husband never knew and perversely I wanted him to…Deliberately I used to arrive late at home to be scolded and beaten- yes, I was also beaten by my sisters-in-law- but that day I broke all the utensils in the kitchen and pushed her into the pond…

Scandal crept over Gokula and I let it happen. Why not? But Krishna was always scared of wagging tongues, he wished to be perfect in all eyes. So he went to Mathura and it was revealed that he was the son of a king and all the topsy-turviness of his birth stood clear for the world to see. And it was said that he only had to touch a hump-backed girl called Kubja to make her whole and perfect.

And swayed by public opinion, he married her. And effectively murdered her.

For, you see, they were totally different and uptil then he had been an insecure young man, totally enmeshed in the myth people wove around him. He had to live upto that myth, always.

He married a woman who was devoted to him, but he did not want that. It was cloying after a time. He was a king and he wanted a queen-poor Kubja was far from that. And so the question of co-wives came in – it would be there sooner or later. And she, poor devoted wife, hung herself from that tree.

Krishna became that myth, an astute politician, a maker of kings, almost a god- only the ghost of Radha haunted him.

 

 

The Radha that he had created,not me. It was impossible that a woman would not be devoted to him, should not die for him – so his eyes would always brim over when I was mentioned and he would go quiet. Kubja, his first wife, was forgotten -  she awakened guilt feelings you see.

Would I hang myself? Anyone who had known me wouldn’t have believed it. I was and am a survivor. I snatched at life, I did not fly from it. And I always loved Ayan – a simple man.

But I needed a complex man to realize that and that was Krishna. It was a turbulent love while it lasted and no more. I had no fantasies about him but he had. He created another Radha for himself, when he left me.

He did not only leave me, Rukmini. He left his childhood and his flute. His flute which was his life, which could charm buds into flowers, the angry waves make calm, a pregnant cow deliver calves easily without the pain of labour…That flute was magic and he broke it before left…

I do not think that he ever played a note again in his life.

And I did not meet him till today when you have brought his body for cremation.

Satyabhama, Jambhuvati….all Krishna’s queens, stand around, but you matter, Rukmini. You loved him. I did not. I loved myself and life more.

Yet by a twist of Fate, it will be my image which will stand by his side and it will be around me that tales of his love will be woven. I had a fling – maybe he did not.

Go in peace, Rukmini, for in the end it was you. Tales maybe written, ballads maybe sung, but in the end we three will know the true story – you, me and him – Krishna…

 

 

Radha’s Song

 

Why am I in love with you? That eternal question.

Why am I in love with you? You, who left me and in so many ways destroyed those whom I had loved…

Why am I in love with you? You who have forgotten the ways we wandered and the trysts we kept in the deep woods beside the river…

Why do I still long to chase away your pain and banish the shadows in your soul ?

Why am I not content in my own home, warmed in the glow of an adoring husband and the love of beautiful children?

Why am I in love with you?

Why am I cursed?

You who so nearly destroyed my home and family?

Who made of me a woman deaf to everything, blind to all reason but the song of the flute and the myriad colours of the setting sun on the Yamuna?  Who taught me the true meaning of what the river murmurs on her way to the sea…

And beyond all this-my husband-Ayan Ghosh. He refused to believe in the whispers and evil titters about me, even when his sisters pointed out what a faithless wife I was. While you reveled (or so it seems) in the gossip about us for it reinforced and gave substance to your legend. The irresistible Krishna.

And Ayan? Women are survivors. Even when they are in love…

It was only I who held him afloat with the strength of my devotion, for he is the father of my children and I do love him…in a way…

I will not let him be destroyed or vanquished. Ever…

For I have made myself of steel and stone and you or your love will not stand against me. Ever…

Though I love you and the night weeps through my bones when I understand how much I need to have you with me…

Though every sunrise sparkles with hope when I realize that I might catch a glimpse of you that day…this day…any day…

Though you are King of Mathura, Lord of the Yadavas and I am only Ayan Ghosh’s wife –Radha.

There is but one Radha and you do not play the flute anymore…

Rukmini, Satyabhama, Jambhuvati do not sing to the music that you played with your heart.

They have never known the cowherd, they have never heard the flute sing; they know that they married a king…

I have never known the king, but I remember the words that the flute sang.

And that gave me strength.

To stamp on the legend of Krishna, who never heard , ‘no’, from a woman.

I would not go to Mathura and be a queen among many queens. A handmaiden among many handmaidens…

Never.

How much did you believe in your own legend and how much did you love Radha?

The laughing charm of the boy from Brindavan.

You have never been able to hide anything from me. I know you will turn away and your heart will gnash its teeth with rage for I have destroyed all your plans.

I have made mud of all your dreams and flung the dust in your face.

As you would have done to me.

And my children.

My babies.

They  laughed and tittered and gossiped about Radha whose only crime was that she loved where she should not have, but even the waters of the Yamuna and the skies of Brindavan would vow that there was no manipulation in that love.

But skies cannot speak and the river has no say.

It is only the tongues of men that can speak and the ears of men that can hear.

My family suffered and you went away to become king in Mathura.

You did not say a word when the people crucified me and mine.

I learned how to survive that day.

When I look at my children’s laughing faces and the grey hairs on my husband’s head, I realize anew that you had nearly brought doom to us.

I realize that you would not have lifted a finger to save us if we had succumbed that day. I know that even now you would throw us to the wolves if you could. For the sake of the legend. The myth.

Yet I love you.

So much that the flowers in Brindavan whisper your name in every breeze that caresses my face.

I try and catch your footprint and read your voice in every person who has gone on ahead.

I wait for you endlessly…and if ever by chance and fate we meet again, I will look scornfully at the failure that you are and turn away…

Such is what we were and what we have become.

And the sea tries endlessly to splash the wayward moon with its waves…and the glory of your name lies hidden in every tear- that I do not shed.