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mother.
The air grew warmer. Less damp.
Perhaps that evening had been a particularly bad one in the
Heart of Darkness. In Ayemenem the men danced as though they
couldn‟t stop. Like children in a warm house sheltering from a
storm. Refusing to emerge and acknowledge the weather. The
wind and thunder. The rats racing across the ruined landscape with
dollar signs in their eyes. The world crashing around them.
They emerged from one story only to delve deep into
another. From Karna Shabadam–Karna‟s Oath–to Duryodhana
Vadbam–the Death of Duryodhana and his brother Dushasana.
It was almost four in the morning when Bhima hunted down
vile Dushasana. The man who had tried to publicly undress the
Pandavas‟ wife, Draupadi, after the Kauravas had won her in a
game of dice. Draupadi (strangely angry only with the men that
won her, not the ones that staked her) has sworn that she will never
tie up her hair until it is washed in Dushasana‟s blood. Bhima has
vowed to avenge her honor.
Bhima cornered Dushasana in a battlefield already strewn
with corpses. For an hour they fenced with each other. Traded
insults. Listed all the wrongs that each had done the other. When
the light from the brass lamp began to flicker and die, they called a
truce. Bhima poured the oil, Dushasana cleaned the charred wick.
Then they went back to war. Their breathless battle spilled out of
the kuthambalam and spun around the temple. They chased each
other across the compound, twirling their papier-mâchâ maces.
Two men in ballooning skirts and balding velvet blouses, vaulting
over littered moons and mounds of dung, circling around the hulk
of a sleeping elephant. Dushasana full of bravado one minute.
Cringing the next. Bhima toying with him. Both stoned.
The sky was a rose bowl. The gray, elephant-shaped Hole in
the Universe agitated in his sleep, then slept again. Dawn was just
breaking when the brute in Bhima stirred. The drums beat louder,
but the air grew quiet and full of menace.