The Thirteenth Day of War Poem by Adil Jussawalla

Over the scattered soldiers' camps, day was about to break.
One man kept vigil over one
He loved as his own grandson,
Asleep like a tired moon at the end of night.
Sumitra recalled the words of his ward's mother:
"Bring him back safe from the War."

The words returned like a song
Half-remembered, half-lost
On the field of Kurukshetra: a woman
Imploring an old retainer
To care for her only son.

And the rivers went their peaceful way.

The dawn was about to break but so was Abhimanyu's sleep
Racked by nightmare.

Slowly waking to light, he recalled:
Angels had called him away from his mother's lap,
Angels had asked him to leave back his garland,
Krishna's gift for valour,
And follow them and win a garland in Heaven.

It's nothing, Sumitra explained.
Just a bad dream you had.
The garland still smells sweet.
It's really nothing.
It's the smell of flowers that got him dreaming.
Today, the son misses the mother.

A sentry announces the break of day . . .

And the War comes his way . . .
With chariots and drums.

Is someone hurt? The young soldier asks,
Is a charioteer dying?

Did he hear right? He must still be dreaming:
The King and the lion-hearted Bhim!
Why should the King come to him?

It seems today the field will run with blood
As never before. Bhim's in a foul mood.

The King explained that the enemy had thrown
A challenge they couldn't refuse.
The Warmaster had promised to smash them in the Chakravyuha.
Arjun and Krishna had already set off
For another battle before he could reach them and give them the news.

He wanted a serious discussion about that
Chakravyuha

That lotus of death . . .

Its petals swords . . .

Chakravyuha.
The word clicked.
A gate opened. Abhimanyu had the answer, he had the key,

The youngest of warriors would do it.
He'd find the way.

The King couldn't believe it. He thought it a young man's boast.

The boy swore he had the key.

They didn't know what to believe. Had his father taught him how?
So Abhimanyu told them:
The key dropped into the womb that housed him
when he was five months old, not yet born,
The memory hurt . . .
Like a thorn in a garden.

He went back to the womb,
Hearing the wind sing as it sang that night, of the moon
And small perishable flowers.

Among the most fragrant flowers in the world
And flowers too soft to touch
Arjun's choice is still Subhadra.

He went back to that night, hearing his father's whispers, his mother's sighs
Listening to their play.

She talks about their unborn son, worries about his safety.

Arjun plans to teach him to be true.

He listens to the plans they make for him:
To be a fighter soon
For Dharma.

A burnt-out age vomits smoke before the final Fire starts.
Arjun cautions.
This smoke discolours Truth, gets into everything we do,
Till we can't tell true from false.
He tells his wife about their cousins, their schemes
To grab their land, their plans to snare
Dronacharya, his guru.

Though Dharma abides,
Their schemes seem to be working, he tells his wife,
His guru was changing sides.
There had to be War.

If that was the price of the final Fire, Subhadra thought aloud,
All their son amounted to was
Sacrifice.

The foetus heard and promised to be true.
The Age, after its birth, would never corrupt it.
As a child it would follow their dear example
And be true. He would do no wrong.

Then Arjun ran through the arts he'd teach his son,
Skills of combat even the gods didn't know.
This one and that one and that one and that one.

He'd teach his son all he knew about War.

He'd teach him how to smash the Chakravyuha.

The foetus heard. It wanted to know, to know, to know.

But what did the word mean in terms of War?
Subhadra asked Arjun to explain.

So did the foetus ask. For more.

So Arjun described the formation:
Its warriors in red,
its horses and chariots and chants
He spoke of the right time to enter it and the right words
to enter it.

The bravest couldn't get in.
Only he, of the brothers, had been taught
By Drona.
He mentioned the sacred words, the key to get in.

The unborn child heard it tinkle.

But how to get out alive - that was a different matter.
No one got out alive if he didn't know how.

And the key to get out was lost
In its mother's sleeping ear.

An unborn warrior, a foetus,
Eager to leave one gate and enter another, wanted
To know, know, know,
And kicked about.

So Abhimanyu confessed to the King that he knew
The secret to get in but not out of the Chakravyuha.

What difference did that make? Yudhisthir laughed.
They swore to follow once he got through the gate,
They promised support.

Bhim too promised to follow. All their allies would follow.
The Kauravas would be smashed.

Enflamed like an insect drawn to conflagration
Abhimanyu grew brave and strong.
His promise Dharma, against wrong, wrong, WRONG.
He would save the nation.
And the king, with sweet words, blessed him,
Blessed him with Dharma,

Against wrong, wrong, WRONG.

The Ganges went its peaceful way,
A blood-fed ocean.

The Brahmin stood on the hour
To set the wheel in motion.

Six the number of men he wanted.
Seven, with him, to make his rosary.

Amongst them, his son.

He told them their positions.

Soldiers at a distance, chanted
Smash the tall ones! Break the small ones!
This is the war of nations.

Warblood danced in the boy's veins,
Went to his head.
His armour the colour of Krishna's skin.
He saw red, red, red.

He knew he would win.

A stripling chosen for a sacred mission,
A father to his grandfather, comforting,
A girl demanding war trinkets
Before the fight itself,
Abhimanyu was all these on that occasion.

He wanted the best of everything. Not any advice
On what the gods required - offerings
To those who preach while others practice

Sacrifice.

In the calm before the storm
Hell's gate was formed.

In the battle in his head
one man lies dead.

In the heavy stagnant air
one simple prayer
reaches Shiva: "Keep your promise."

So Jayadratha prayed, guarding the gate
Of Chakravyuha,
But soon snapped out of his prayer.
Only Arjun could defeat him,
He knew,
But Arjun was away.
So what oppressed him?
What was this thing
Riding his way?

His nephew! asking him to play!
This was no place for children, he shouted.
If he didn't go somewhere else, he'd die!

Corpses lay like logs on both sides of the house.
One more to join them.
So fight, fight, die!

The fox's tails on fire.
He's running in circles.

The ox is dragging a leg. The boy's
Almost got him.

The Marshall's lost his weapons
And is losing his mind.

Sakuni sees everyone running in circles,
Caught in their own trap.

There's got to be a master-plan
Behind all this, he thinks.
And thinking of what it might be,
What Krishna had in mind -
The boy a demon but still a boy -
The fox becomes a man.
He sees the hand of the great Manoeuverer
Hold the boy there, on the battlefield - at that point - there.
He sees through Krishna's plan.

He sees Death, fat
With the children of warriors,
The boy's stunned bride, their child
Lost, her womb flat.
And appeals to the egotist Krishna:
Not that, not that, not that.

Dharma, Dharma, Dharma.
The words explode in Duryodhana's head.
Insults pour out like blood.

The injuries done to this man cannot heal.
The injuries done to his clan cannot heal.

The guru is the other side's man.
He can't shoot straight when he sees the boy,
His eye's shone like a lover's.

He placed his own son in their midst, one more Brahmin!
Duryodhana rages,
How could they win?
He should have seen through the tricks of those who preach
Dharma, Dharma, Dharma.

From childhood onwards, the word battered
Into his ears . . .

"Truth by mouth, falsehood in hand,
selfishness by heart,"

That's the Brahmin's slogan, he shouts.

He saw the truth as multiple drops of sand,
Not as opposing sides of right and wrong
And trembled at what he saw.

As the sap of a tree struck by lightning,
Bubbles and flows to its roots, so the king
Let rivers of rage scald his split self

Down to the roots he cursed, his father blind from birth.

Cursed. Cursed. To see for himself. To see what
Truth is and what it isn't. Never to trust
The blind history of gurus
Nor the vision of blind fathers.

He didn't care if his guru heard
His insults. He wanted his meal
Of one warrior trapped in the wheel -
That was the guru's word.

He kept it. The Brahmin turned wheelwright,
Driving seven hard spokes towards the boy,
Seven charioteers to hub the boy,
Breaking the rules of conduct, the rules of battle.
Seven hard shafts to kill one boy,
Each a rotten toothpick without the other.

DRONA
"Kill the boy! Jump him from the back!
Kill the boy!"

ASHWATHAMA
"Do as my father says.
Circle the boy
Kill him!"

KRIPACHARYA
"Acharya, we're here, we're here!
Who'll kill the boy?"

KARNA
"I'll do it since you're so scared,
Karna will kill the boy!"

SHAKUNI
"Over here, king - we'd be mad to take him on singly.
Together, we'll get the boy!"

DUSHASANA
"You, Abhimanyu! Look what's coming to get you.
Happy playing soldier, are you?
Look what's coming to get you, giddy little boy!"

DURYODHANA
"Stand by your word, great teacher.
Get ready to kill the boy
Or he'll wipe us all out.
He'll send our race to hell,
And you'll go with us. Kill Arjun's son!"

He came like a black ray, this sun,
His garland eclipsing his black.
As the rivers went their peaceful way.

He shone like a dark hope, this son,
His veins running with gold.
Far from his father's sight.

They kill Sumitra, his charioteer.
To which country will you take your garland? they shout
As Abhimanyu falls.

Call him back, boy, to mend that chariot wheel of yours, they shout
As Abhimanyu tries to stand up.

Remember the wheel, something tells Abhimanyu,
Fight with the chariot's wheel.

Call on your father now, his enemies cry
As Abhimanyu fights.
Shout on. No one minds.

A boy calls on Krishna.
Krishna's brightness blinds.

As Abhimanyu's spirit rises towards Heaven,
As it gazes on Kurukshetra, beginning to understand,
Another voice speaks through the spirit,
Another dead soldier's:
"What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them . . ." [*]

When I set out for Heaven's Gate, I thought
It would be easy . . . "Drop dead in the Great War,"
They said when I enlisted, "and the soul flies
Straight up to God." After all, brave lads have done it before,
For him, King and Country, and got there.

It didn't turn out like that. When I rose towards God
I turned . . .
Something compelled me to turn and look back
at earth . . .
I saw
The battlefield again, soldiers rising and falling,
My body being sniffed by dogs for what it was worth.

So I went back for love of my body, leaked with its blood,
Down, down,
Pass root and clod, away from God,
Into a strange town.

There I met others who had fallen with me and long
before,
Had fallen . . . by rivers that fed great empires, or fallen
In valleys and seas, kings, merchants and slaves,
A prince whose star was on the rise,
Killed at my age, whose mind coiled and recoiled
like mine, in a different time,
‘Round pointless sacrifice.

This thing of going straight up to God when you're killed
in a righteous War sounds nice
On paper. What often happens
Is sacrifice

For a blind ruler
Obsessed with his own race, his own nation,
And of course for God . . . who needs our blood
To oil the wheels of his great enterprise . . .
the rise and fall of nations.

"In every age I come back
To deliver the holy,
To destroy the sin of the sinner
To establish righteousness,"
Krishna said.

So will I come back, again and again
To harrow the living. We are the dead.

Makers of pointless Sacrifice,
and you who believe in its worth,
Give of yourselves as much as you can
For Palem [**], Earth,
The mother who cares for us all. Give,
That this be Paradise,
Where we once and only live.



* from Wilfred Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth.

** Palem means Mother in Manipuri