Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Sabhā · 16 of 50
16. Thirteen years
Sabhā (सभा)
They put on the hide of bark. Draupadī's hair is left unbound. She will tie it, she says, when the hair that was dragged has an answer. Kuntī stays in the city with Vidura. A mother on the throne's side and five children on the road: the poem is careful about who is abandoned by the sentence and who is abandoned by the journey. The citizens follow them a long way out of the gate, and then the forest takes the five and their wife.
Duryodhana has what he wanted, which is the kingdom and the sight of them leaving. He does not have peace. Vidura tells him so and is dismissed for it. Dhṛtarāṣṭra has his son and his guilt in the same chair. Bhīṣma stays. The vow he made as a young man was to serve the Kuru throne, and the throne has just done a thing he could not bless and did not stop. Service, from here on, is going to look like complicity. He will not leave.
The thirteen years are the punishment the dice named. They are also the delay in which every later speech about dharma will be tested. A man who can talk well about justice has just staked his wife. A hall that can talk well about a king's duty has just refused a legal question. The forest is where those facts have to be lived, slowly.
नेपालीमा
उनीहरूले वल्कल लगाए। द्रौपदीको कपाल खुलै रह्यो। कुन्ती विदुरसँग सहरमा बसिन्। नागरिकहरू सहरको ढोकाभन्दा धेरै टाढासम्म पछ्याए, अनि वनले पाँच जना र उनीहरूकी पत्नीलाई लियो। दुर्योधनले राज्य पायो, शान्ति पाएन। भीष्म बसे। सिंहासनको सेवा अब सहमतिजस्तो देखिन थाल्नेछ। तेह्र वर्ष पासाले तोकेको दण्ड हो, र त्यो ढिलाइ पनि हो जसमा धर्मको प्रत्येक भाषण जाँचिनेछ।