CHAKRAVYUHA Poem by Adil Jussawalla

Narrator:

God in his wilderness circles his distant chariot.
Earth wheels but is still, still to the distant eye
As a mad dog running in circles is still to the vulture's
One track mind. As a boy, his spine smashed,
Spins on the floor of War's theatre.

NO!
Earth isn't still to him, the dog, or to us, drugged
Actors on a battlefield, spinning along like tops in dark excitement.
We whistle like tops to the beat of war music . . .
In Earth's theatre.

Earth and the troubles within us. At its hub
A boy of fifteen,
Thirsty to lap at the edge of a whirlpool, the whirlpool of War.

Earth's a house divided against itself, storms open
And slam its doors, but so do we, so does the hungry man-eater,
The ruthless leader, setting cousin against cousin, brother against brother
In wars he believes to be just.

Call the sides what you like,
The War never stops, only its players shift.

Once, on an Indian plain, between two rivers,
There grew a rift that swallowed the world . . .
A battle between two powers . . .
The Kauravas and the Pandavas.

What's Dharma? To say its the truth
Isn't much use,
To say it's right conduct, natural law
Your duty, yours and none other's
Is getting there.

Watch this scene-setter and his pupils.
They aren't getting anywhere.
They're strictly theatre
Make-up, gestures - you know that camp.

This one might play the vamp
One day. He's got talent.
This one's
The sort who
Never gets anything right.

He says there's nothing new under the sun.
Everything has a history. Even this stage production.
The only original is "O," the circle, zero.

Which is the mark he'll get for acting smart.

He'll never get anything right.
Except the one line he was never taught.
"This is the age of lies, deceit and spite."

Time throws us like pots and we spin
As one great cycle's ending,
On the battle-field of Dharma,
The war of the Mahabharata,
Our Dark Age begins.

Earth shakes.
Birds scatter.
There's Kurukshetra . . . every nation gathered
On one side or the other.

Forced to reclaim a kingdom
Lost in a game of dice, are five warriors,
Five brothers - there -
The Pandavas, forced to fight a war of attrition.

The other side shows its might.
The wind comes up, flags flutter in every direction.
There is no make-believe, it's the war of every nation.
Our scene-setter points out the bad ones:
Ox, Insect, Fox.
Among them a Brahmin teacher.

And those the good ones
Who'd lost that teacher to the other side.

Across the field, he sees a peacock dance:
The flag of our hero, Abhimanyu, Arjun's son.

And the play's about to start.

Ladies and gentlemen, says our sutradhar,
Welcome to our small stage. The scope of the eye you see through
Is also small but your hearts are big. Receive our players there.
For the events of the war we describe, where Krishna played,
Is also the daily war in our sick hearts as we strive to be
Perfect warriors in the cause of Dharma.
Take us on trust. As I take your leave,
This is no place for us.
We'll leave you to the War.

Eat the small ones, break the tall ones.
This is the war of flags.
Power-grabbers flag our war off.
The whole Earth's up for grabs.

Battle-horse, you come with an empty saddle.
Battle-chiefs, come dance to the end of our play.
With battle-toys we ride and riddle and raddle.
Dance, battle-chiefs, dance to the end of our play.

Powertall, you send the small to battle,
Powerhigh, you down us while we play.
"What passing bells for these who die as cattle?"
SACRIFICE! You'll carry us all away.

Kurukshetra . .
Kurukshetra . . .
You'll carry us all away.

The wind sang in grief. On both sides of the house,
Great warriors lay like logs, piles of timber.
Drona grieved too. He smelt the bad blood in his heart.
Smelt defeat. He had fallen too. From holy teacher to Warmaster.

The Marshall court-martialed himself.
He knew he had sinned. Once a small rose tree, scented with wisdom,
Now a petrified forest. He stood between Dharma and night.
His shadow passed, was passing into the dark field of Time,
This fresh age of spite and unreason, this field of endless War.

He prayed for forgiveness.
His retreat . . . cut off!

Enter the royal pack, to hound him with mistrust.
Sure of themselves, sure that he'd split himself
Between them and the other side. They call him

Coward, Spy, Pandava side-kick,
The other side's man, after all.

Yesterday they were badly whipped,
They snap at his heels, snarl, whine and lick him.

Dushasana sounds like a wasp,
Breaking into his guru's prayers.
Insulting Krishna.

Sakuni adds his note: the politician's.
Do gurus also promise and not deliver?

Drona agrees it's all politics.
The name of their game is politics,
Breaking his spirit on their wheel of doubt.

What more can be do about
the war, he asks the king,
than try his best to win?

Duryodhana has reason to doubt.
"Let Truth triumph! Let Dharma win!", the people shout,
Fully behind the other side. Fooled by the greatest sinners of them all,
The ones who can do no wrong but who do it all the time.

Like that two-faced Brahmin, he says.

My religion's Dharma, everything's Dharma,
Drona replies.

The word tears the king apart.
Insults pour out like blood.

Those preachers of truth and right conduct had killed his grandfather
In battle by hiding behind a eunuch dressed as a woman.
Who thought up that plot but Krishna, the so-called god
Who asks us to leave our duties in his care?

It's as bad as that stupid prayer,
The guru was saying - to Krishna!

They go for their guru's throat, hound him and lick him.

The fox calls him a spy.
A crane flutters and flatters,
The insect calls him a traitor.

The insect gets slapped. The Brahmin's stung.

Duryodhana tries to command.

His ally, Jayadratha, reports how a king fell yesterday
A falcon brought down by iron-beaked sparrows.
The arrows of Arjun were flying in every direction,
They were losing, that was a fact.

They hound Drona again to make him react.

The King goes into his act
Again.
He swears the injury done to his clan cannot heal.
This Dark Age done
Time will show he was right.
He has done no wrong.

He swears by the sun
That chariots will be his rack if he has,
Dragging his body through the streets
Until it cracks open, trailing his guts through forest and field,

He has done no wrong.

Not wrong, says Drona. It's just that he's not as young as he was.
And Arjun is . . .

Arjun is teacher's pet, snaps the fox.
His words suit
This age of deceit.

The King's not past deceiving.
Their guru's the warrior they really believe in.
Its time he proved it.

For the crane it's time for a song.

Brighter than a thousand suns, he croons,
Your face just like the milky moon's
You are our guru, our real guru.

Purer than the purest ghee, he sings
Your wisdom worth a thousand oafish kings,
You are our guru, our real guru.

Drona sees what they can't.
They'll soon be singing another tune.
Krishna's not on their side,
He loves Arjun.

Since he can't win their hearts, he offers to lose
His life.

Sakuni thinks that's a terrible idea.
His mind begins to reel
Until it snags on one no one had thought of:
The Wheel! The Wheel!
The fox's mind runs like a sewer
Into the maze of CHAKRAVYUHA!

Yes! That!
One Pandava trapped in the Wheel
Tomorrow will wipe out his doubt.
One dies before tomorrow's out.

He's licked. The Brahmin's licked.
He'll give them that gift,
That lotus of death,
Its trap of petals swords
That fold around a victim, swift!

Arjun isn't the victim. He knows how to get out
Leaving a crumpled flower. It was Drona himself
who taught him how.

He agitates, this man of God,
To have a suicide squad from the hills
Draw Arjun away - just the right
Diversionary measure to get him off their backs
While they make the wheel formation and fight
Whoever's mad enough to try and break it.

He chooses his circle of warriors.

To guard the gate, he chooses Jayadratha
Who's deeply honoured.

The guru knows he's got to do it, but his heart's not in it. His mind's
A battlefield of numbers and chants. He finds
He can't think straight.
He offers himself to Krishna.

Krishna's brightness blinds.