Bhima at Kubera's Lake

The wind that came down from the north-east that day carried something Draupadi had never smelled before: a fragrance so pure and so unfamiliar that she rose from where she sat and went to find its source, a single divine lotus of a thousand petals, the saugandhika, resting where the breeze had dropped it on the ground. She had seen such flowers only in stories. Holding it, she felt for a moment that exile itself had lightened.

She carried it to Bhima first. "Look at it," she said. "I will give this one to the king. But bring me more, many more, so that I can take them back with us to our hermitage in Kamyaka. If I am dear to you, Bhima, bring them." Then she took the flower to Yudhishthira.

Bhima heard the wish the way he heard every wish of hers: as an instruction he could not set aside. He took up his bow and his arrows, and later his club, and without another word started up the slopes of Gandhamadana in the direction the wind had come from.

The way was not empty. On a narrow path through a grove of plantains an old monkey lay across the track and would not move, and would not be jumped over, and could not be shifted even when Bhima took hold of his tail. The monkey turned out to be Hanuman himself, Bhima's elder brother, a son of the same wind god. He showed Bhima something of the enormous form in which he had once leapt the ocean, embraced him, promised to roar beside him from Arjuna's banner when the great battle came, and set him on the road to the flowers. Bhima went on, the blessing still warm on him.

The road led him at last to a wide river golden with lotuses, and beside it a lake so beautiful that even the stories struggled to describe it honestly. Saugandhika lotuses covered its surface with stalks like lapis, the water was cool and clear as nectar, and the air above it carried the same fragrance that had drifted down to Draupadi's feet. It was the pleasure garden of Kubera, the lord of wealth, fed by springs from the mountains near his abode, and even gods and sages drank there only with his leave.

It was not unguarded. Hundreds and thousands of rakshasas called the krodhavashas watched it at their king's command, and when they saw an armed man in deerskin walking fearlessly down to gather the lotuses, they came to ask who he was.

"I am Bhimasena, the Pandava, next in birth to Dharma's son," he said. "The wind carried one of these flowers to my wife, and she wants more. I have come to gather them."

"This is Kubera's own garden," they told him. "No mortal plays here. Even the gods ask the lord of the yakshas before they drink. Take these flowers by force and you insult him, and you will be destroyed. How can you call yourself the brother of the king of dharma?"

"I do not see your lord here," said Bhima, "and if I did, I would not beg him. Kshatriyas do not beg. This lake was made by mountain springs. It belongs to all beings as much as to him. Who should ask whom?"

And he waded in. They shouted at him to bind him, to cut him down, to cook and eat him, and rushed at him with spears and axes. Bhima took up his heavy gold-inlaid club and met them on the shore. He killed hundreds of them, the foremost among them first, and the rest broke and fled into the sky toward Kailasa. He went back into the water, drank, and gathered lotuses as he pleased.

The guards ran to Kubera with their story. The lord of wealth only laughed. "Let Bhima take as many lotuses as he wants for Draupadi," he said. "I know the reason."

Far below, Yudhishthira had seen the sky darken and the earth shake, and when Draupadi told him where Bhima had gone, the brothers followed, carried through the air by Ghatotkacha and his rakshasas. They found Bhima standing on the bank among the bodies of the slain, his club raised like Death's own staff. Yudhishthira embraced him again and again and spoke gently. "What have you done? Your courage has displeased the gods. If you want to please me, never do this again." Then they gathered lotuses together, the guards came and bowed to the king, and with Kubera's permission the Pandavas stayed by that lake for a time.

Years of the exile passed. In the fifth year, waiting for Arjuna to return from heaven, the Pandavas came to the hermitage of the royal sage Arshtishena on the slopes of Gandhamadana and lived there many months. Then one day Garuda swooped down and carried off a great serpent from the lake on the mountain, and the force of his wings shook the peak and tore down trees, and a wind blew down to the hermitage carrying divine flowers of five colours.

Draupadi found Bhima sitting alone and spoke to him. "Your brother Arjuna once held off gandharvas, serpents, rakshasas and Indra himself at Khandava," she said. "You are as strong as Indra. Drive the rakshasas off this mountain, Bhima, so that they flee in every direction, and let all of us see its summit without fear. I have wanted to see the top of this mountain for a long time."

Stung by her words, Bhima took up his bow, his sword, his quivers and his club and went up through a narrow passage where only one man could pass at a time, onto the summit, and there saw the abode of Kubera, bright with gold and crystal. He blew his conch, twanged his bow and slapped his arms, and yakshas, rakshasas and gandharvas came pouring out at the sound. He cut down their weapons with his arrows and cut down their bodies after, until the survivors threw away their clubs and fled.

One stood his ground: a broad-chested rakshasa named Maniman, Kubera's friend, proud of his standing at Kubera's court. "What will you tell the lord of wealth," he jeered at the fleeing host, "when so many of you were beaten by one man?" He came at Bhima with lance, spear and club. His javelin pierced Bhima's right arm. Bhima took his iron club, shattered Maniman's spear, leapt into the air and hurled the club down on him like Indra's thunderbolt, and Maniman fell dead, like a bull felled by a lion.

Long before that day, flying with Kubera's host, Maniman had spat from the sky on the head of the sage Agastya as he stood at his austerities, and Agastya had answered with a curse: Maniman and the armies with him would die at the hands of a man, and Kubera, who had looked on, would carry the grief of it until he met that man. No one on the summit that day, least of all Maniman, knew that the hour had come.

The noise rolled down the mountain, and Yudhishthira, the twins, Dhaumya and the brahmanas, missing Bhima, left Draupadi in Arshtishena's care and climbed up armed. They found him on the summit among the dead, and embraced him, and then Yudhishthira spoke to him with none of the gentleness of the lotus lake.

"Whether you did this out of bravery or delusion, it is unworthy of you," he said, "as unworthy as a lie is in a hermit. One should not act against the wishes of a king. You have offended the gods. If you want to please me, never act like this again."

Meanwhile the survivors had fled to Kubera, bloodied and weaponless, crying that one man had taken the mountain and killed his friend Maniman. The lord of wealth, enraged at this second offence, mounted his chariot and came through the sky with a vast host of yakshas behind him. But when he saw the sons of Pandu standing before him, bows in hand, his anger left him, and he was pleased.

"Do not be angry with Bhima," he told Yudhishthira, "and do not be ashamed of what he did. These yakshas and rakshasas were already killed by destiny. Your brother was only the instrument. I am not angry. I am pleased." To Bhima he said, "You did this violent thing for Draupadi's sake, ignoring me and the gods. Even so, I am pleased with you. You have freed me from a terrible curse." And he told them how Maniman had spat on Agastya, and what Agastya had said.

He did not leave it there. He told Yudhishthira that Bhima was fearless but did not know dharma, was childish and prone to violence, and should be restrained. Bhima laid down his spear, his club, his sword and his bow and bowed to him. Then Kubera took the Pandavas under his protection, promised that the yakshas would serve them, and told them that Arjuna would soon return with the weapons of heaven. The bodies of the slain were carried from the summit, and that night the brothers slept without fear in the residences on the mountain.

Yudhishthira's rebuke came before Kubera's pardon, and the pardon did not unsay it. He had seen yakshas and rakshasas slain by the score, a god's household stormed without leave, and a champion killed on a mountain that Draupadi had only wished to see, and he told his brother plainly that strength spent so freely offends the gods and brings its own fruit. Kubera, of all the parties with cause to resent the deed, resented it least, and yet he too told Yudhishthira to hold his brother back.

Bhima accepted both, as he always accepted such things, without much argument. He had brought Draupadi her flowers once, and her mountain top the second time. Yudhishthira's caution was not wrong. It was simply aimed at a danger that the gods had already turned to their own purpose before the caution arrived.

That was the strange shape of the whole affair, and the reason it reads less as a cautionary tale about Bhima's temper than as a story about how differently the same act can look depending on who is left to judge it. A brother saw recklessness. A wife saw devotion. A god saw a debt finally collected, and still called the man who collected it childish. Bhima himself saw none of these and simply did what he had been asked. On that mountain, it was enough. The club that struck down Maniman was violence, plainly and without excuse, and it was also, just as plainly, the end of a curse that could end no other way.