Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Strī · 43 of 50
43. The women
Strī (स्त्री)
The field belongs to the women on the next morning that is not a battle. Gāndhārī walks it. She had bound her eyes on her wedding day so that she would not see more than her husband. She sees now, by the permission of the poem, what a hundred sons look like when they are dead. She does not blame only the dice and only her boy. She blames Kṛṣṇa. He could have stopped it. He did not. She curses him, and the curse is the Yādava line destroying itself. The poem ties this walk to the clubs by the sea, decades on. A mother's sentence lands later.
Dhṛtarāṣṭra asks to embrace Bhīma, the killer of his sons, and the embrace would be a crushing. Kṛṣṇa puts an iron image in the blind man's arms. The image is crushed. The king collapses over what he has done, and the real Bhīma is alive beside him. Even consolation, in this parva, is a trick. Kuntī then speaks the sentence she has saved. Karṇa was hers. The pyre of the enemy's marshal is a son's pyre. Yudhiṣṭhira, who wanted one clean grief, is given a second.
Draupadī's unbound hair has its answer, and the answer is not a restoration. Her sons are dead. Her husbands are kings of a field. The Strī-parva does not moralize her. It lets the women be the ones who know the number. The men have been counting victory and defeat. The women are counting children.
नेपालीमा
युद्ध नभएको अर्को बिहान मैदान महिलाहरूको हुन्छ। गान्धारी हिँडिन्। विवाहको दिन पतिभन्दा बढी नहेर्न आँखा बाँधेकी उनले अहिले सय छोरा मरेको देखिन्। उनले पासा र आफ्नो छोरालाई मात्र होइन, कृष्णलाई पनि दोष दिइन्: उहाँले रोक्न सक्नुहुन्थ्यो। उनले यादव वंश आफैंमा सिद्धिने श्राप दिइन्। धृतराष्ट्रले भीमलाई अँगाल्न चाहे, र त्यो अँगालो पेलेर मार्ने खालको थियो। कृष्णले फलामको मूर्ति राखिदिनुभयो। मूर्ति चूर भयो। अनि कुन्तीले भनिन्, कर्ण मेरो थियो। शत्रुको सेनापतिको चिता छोराको चिता हो। द्रौपदीको खुला कपालले उत्तर पाउँछ, तर त्यो पुनर्स्थापना होइन। उनका छोरा मरेका छन्। पुरुषले जित र हार गन्थे; स्त्रीपर्वमा महिलाले छोराछोरी गन्छन्।