Amba

“Salva, my soul has surrendered to your love and it would not accept anyone else other than you” said Amba as she placed her head on Salva’s chest. They sat beneath a peepal tree on the banks of river Ganga in Kasi.

King of Kasi had planned a grand Swayamvar for his three young daughters - Amba, Ambika and Ambalika. But Amba secretly loved King Salva.

“Amba, I love you more than anything else on this earth. I promise you, I will win you in Swayamvar tomorrow” said Salva reassuring Amba.

Despite of Salva’s promise, Amba had a premonition that something inauspicious would certainly happen at the time of Swayamvar.

*******

“I openly challenge everyone present here. If any one of you has courage, try to stop me from taking these three sisters away with me to Hastinapur” announced an unexpected voice in the royal court where Swayamvar was underway.

“Who is he?” Amba asked her sisters petrified of his sudden appearance.

“He is Devavrata, Prince of Hastinapur” replied Ambalika.

“People say he has taken a vow to never get married or even get laid with any woman all his life!! That is why people call him Bhishma, referring to his lifelong oath of celibacy” added Ambika.

“Then why is he here? Has he broken the vow?” wondered Amba.

Bhishma had travelled from Hastinapur to Kasi to find a bride for his step-brother and the crowned Prince of Hastinapur, Vichitravirya.

Bhishma was not only an unparalleled archer and warrior but was also blessed with a wish-long-life. He would die only when he would decide himself that it was time for him to go. Therefore no one in the royal court dared to raise his voice against Bhishma, except one.

“Oh Mighty Bhishma, you can take the other two sisters, but leave Amba here. Amba is mine. I love her” Salva resorted for his love.

Salva was hardly a contest for the great Bhishma. In the swordfight, Salva did not last even for 15 minutes. Bhishma defeated King Salva and spared his life.

Bhishma abducted the three sisters.

*******

“Oh Bhishma, the most benevolent of all, truth is that even I love Salva and I have taken a vow to spend my entire life with him and only him” Confessed Amba, after the troupe of Bhishma reached Hastinapur.

“Salva? He is a loser” Bhishma said rejecting Amba’s plea.

“Yes I agree he lost to you but he stood against you… and challenged you… which no one else in the entire court dared to do. He did all this for our love. He is my hero”

Vichitravirya took pity on Amba and asked Bhishma to let Amba go to King Salva. Bhishma arranged transportation on the order of the King, for Amba, to King Salva’s kingdom. But King Salva refused to accept Amba.

“He insulted me in front of so many people in Swayamvar!!” said King Salva referring to Bhishma.

“First he spared my life to prove his greatness to others, now he has sent you back to me because you were of no good use to him!!”

“I am Man and a Man does not live on anyone else’s pity. Moreover you were away with him for so many days, how do I know what all transpired between Bhishma and you. You are beautiful enough to make him forget his vow of celibacy”

Amba couldn’t believe those words came out of Salva’s mouth. Disheartened, Amba went back to Kasi. 

But now her father also refused to give her place to stay in the palace.

Amba decided to return to Bhishma in Hastinapur. She hoped Bhishma would accept her; after all it was him whose actions were responsible for Amba’s misery.

“I cannot marry you. I am sorry for whatever I did to you. But being a Kshatriya, I cannot break my vow. Yeh adharma hai. This is wrong” said Bhishma in his apologetically tone.

Amba could not bear this bare hypocrisy of Bhishma.

“Adharma!!! You have spoiled my life. I have nowhere to go, no one is ready to accept me and this is all because of bloody you. And over that you say you cannot help me because it is wrong to break your vow”

“You double-faced fox, you took away happiness from my life. You will see now how I take away happiness from your life”

For the next many months, Amba knocked on the door of the Kings of every possible kingdom; she asked the Kings to fight Bhishma and his army but no one agreed to fight against the mighty Bhishma for her. They were all convinced that Bhishma was invincible. And so they did not want to do anything that would earn the wrath of Bhishma and the army of Hastinapur.

Finally Parasuram agreed to fight for Amba’s cause and bring her retribution. Parasuram was Bhishma’s teacher. He had taught Bhishma the art of warfare.

The battle between the guru and shishya lasted for 23 days. The legend has it that Gods from heaven had to intervene just before Bhishma was about to kill his own teacher with the most destructive weapon which Bhishma had earned from Lord Siva. In the end Parasuram was defeated.

Amba was lonely again. She resorted to penance in the forest. Impressed with her determination Lord Subramanya descended from the sky and gave her a garland of ever blue lotuses.

“Dear Amba, I assure you, who ever wear this garland will become the reason of Bhishma’s death. And you will have your revenge fulfilled”

Having earned the license to kill Bhishma, Amba yet again knocked on the door of kings; she requested, otherwise acknowledged as “brave kings”, to wear the blessed garland and defeat Bhishma for her. But no King was ready to champion her cause.

Dejected by this world of superficial heroes, she decided to quit her life. She hung the garland on the gate of the King Drupad’s Palace, the last king she approached for help and got rejected from.

She jumped from a high cliff to death.

*******

“Bhagwaan, why did I suffer this miserable fate? Why wasn’t Bhishma punished for the wrong things he did? Why couldn’t I take my revenge?”

“Amba, sometimes you have to die in order to rise from your own ashes. Sometimes you have to die to reborn again, to believe in yourself and love yourself…. to become the person you had always wanted to be.”

*******

Amba was born again. That too in the family of King Drupad, the last King she approached for help and got rejected from. King Drupad named her daughter Shikhandini.

One day while playing in the garden of Drupad’s palace, Shikhandini’s eyes caught fancy of a garland made of ever-blue lotuses hanging on the gate.

“Remove that bloody garland from your neck, you fool” King Drupad shouted at her as soon as he saw the garland around her neck. But King Drupad was late.

As soon as Shikhandini wore that garland, there were a bright flash of light before her and the story of her last birth and misery flashed right before her. Shikhandini realised the purpose of her rebirth.

“I depended on others. That was the only reason I could not take my revenge”

“This time I will not wait for a Man to avenge my honour; because if I do, I will be again left waiting for ever”

King Drupad knew the dangers involved with that garland around her daughter’s neck. He was still not ready to do anything that would make the mighty Bhishma his enemy. So he had only one option left before himself, to save his kingdom from the army of Hastinapur. He asked the young Shikhandini to leave the kingdom at once and get lost.

Amba had barely reached puberty when she left for the forest. Before leaving she took a vow.

“I shall not return till the time I am ready and prepared to defeat Bhishma”

No one saw Shikhandini in her years of penance. She finally returned when the battle at Kurukshetra was announced.

And when she returned she was no more a woman. She returned with a body of man and physique of a warrior. Some said she developed that body by remaining under water all through those years. Some others insisted that she exchanged her sex with Yaksha and became a eunuch in the process.

*******

It was the end of 9^th day of the battle at Kurukshetra and Bhishma, the Commander-in-Chief of the Kaurava forces, was the strongest barrier that protected the Kaurava camp from impending defeat from Pandavas. Pandavas had no idea on how to defeat Bhishma.  

That night while finalising their strategy for the next day Pandavas decided to use Shikhandini.

On 10^th day of the battle before Shikhandini left for the battleground, Draupadi, wife of Five Pandavas, visited Shikhandini.

“Sister, I have come here to express my gratitude to you.  I overheard the plan of my husbands of how they plan to use you as bait to defeat Bhishma Pitamah”

“I just want to thank you for helping my five husbands avenge my honour”

“Honour?” interrupted Shikhandini. “Do you really think that they are fighting for YOUR honour?”

Shikhandini was surprised at Draupadi’s innocence.

“If your husbands wanted to avenge your honour they would have done it that very moment when Duryodhana commanded Dushasana to bring you into the court, forcefully if he must. I was told that you were clad in one piece of attire when Dushasan grabbed you by hair and brought you into the court. Why did the most powerful Pandavas remained silent then?”

“My husbands were bound by their dharma that day” defended Draupadi. “They had lost everything they owned to those cunning Kauravas in the game of dice”

“My innocent sister, which dharma on earth allows a man to pledge his own wife in a game of dice? Which dharma on earth lets a man sit helplessly while his enemy disrobe his own wife?”

“What good are those husbands for, who are otherwise considered the greatest warriors on earth, but sit quietly when their wife cries for help and justice? Even you know the Pandavas have the most lethal weapons on earth with them, gifted by the Gods themselves. And mind you they were not even physically chained at that moment.“

“A man fights for nothing, but his own pride and honour”

“The great saint Valmiki had already foretold that it will be only in this battle that Pandavas will receive the immortality for which world will remember them for thousands of years”

“Mahabharat was never about you, Draupadi.”

*******

Shikhandini was riding on a chariot driven by Krishna. As planned, Krishna cut his way through the battle ground and reached close to the chariot of Bhishma.

Bhishma at once recognised Shikhandini as Amba. He was startled. He always knew he had sinned and someday his karma would bite him back. But he had never expected it to happen this way.

Shastras preach that a Kshatriya never raises his weapon in front of a woman. Although the world recognised Shikhandini as a man, Bhishma knew that she was Amba, a woman. As a devout follower of Shastras, Bhishma lowered down his weapon.

Moreover as per the rules of battle between Kauravs and Pandavas, a woman wouldn’t be allowed to fight in the battlefield. Confident Bhishma was sure that he wouldn’t be attacked or hurt by Shikhandini as well.

But little did he know that Arjun was hiding behind Shikhandini on the chariot. As soon as Bhishma laid down his weapon, Arjun came out from behind and threw a volley of arrows at Bhishma. His body was pierced with arrows. Bhishma fell on the battlefield.

Thus as Lord Subramaniam had foretold, Shikhandini became the reason of Bhishma’s death and Amba had her revenge fulfilled.

The war stopped momentarily with the fall of Bhishma. Soldiers, commanders, Kings from both the sides left their weapons in their places and gathered near the body of Bhishma. Gods appeared in the sky to pay respect to the man who was often considered the greatest example of devotion and sacrifice.

Shikhandini also got down from her chariot and walked towards Bhishma’s body. She looked at Bhishma lying miserably and defeated on the ground. His eyes were filled with tears of pain. She leaned forward towards Bhishma and spoke.

“I was a woman; even then this world discarded me. I felt wretched when not only my lover but even my own father refused to accept me. Nobody came for my rescue even though everyone knew what you did to me was wrong. That is why I wanted to take this revenge from you.”

“Today I feel at ease when I see you lying helplessly like this…. and I regret nothing.”

*******

Shikhandini was finally killed by Ashwatthama on the 18th day of battle. She insisted that soldiers took her to Draupadi; she said she had a message for Draupadi before she breathes last.

“Draupadi” Amba spoke in a heavy voice filled with air, “Remember… if you wait for a man to avenge your honour, you will keep waiting for a lifetime”

*******