The Fateful Game

In Hastinapura, the seat of the Kuru throne, Duryodhana could not forget what he had seen. Only weeks before he had been a guest in Indraprastha, at the great Rajasuya sacrifice of his cousins, and the memory festered in him like a wound. King Yudhishthira had been crowned emperor. Kings from every quarter of the earth had bowed before him and laid tribute at his feet - gold, gems, horses, elephants, sandalwood and silk heaped so high that Duryodhana's heart turned sour at the sight of it. He was the eldest son of Hastinapura, the heir of the Kuru throne, and yet here he stood as a guest in a city more dazzling than his own.

The palace had been built by Maya, the divine architect, and it played tricks upon the eye. Where the floor looked like polished water, it was solid stone. Where it looked like dry land, a clear pool waited. Duryodhana, distracted by his envy, mistook crystal floor for pond and lifted his garments to wade across; then, reaching what he thought was water, he stumbled and fell into a real pool, soaked and humiliated.

The servants laughed. Worse, Draupadi and her maids, watching from above, laughed too. Bhima's deep voice carried down, mocking him as the blind son of a blind father. The words struck Duryodhana like a whip across the face. He climbed out dripping, his fine clothes ruined, his pride in ashes, and in that moment a hatred took root in him that would never again loosen its hold.

He said nothing to the Pandavas. He bowed, made his courtesies, and rode home to Hastinapura with the laughter still ringing in his ears. But by the time the dust of the road settled behind him, Duryodhana had decided that he would not rest until the glory of Indraprastha was torn down and Yudhishthira reduced to nothing.

Back in Hastinapura, Duryodhana could neither eat nor sleep. His face grew pale and his temper short, until his uncle Shakuni, prince of Gandhara, came to his side and asked what poison was eating at him.

"How can I be at peace," Duryodhana burst out, "while Yudhishthira sits as emperor of the world? I saw kings I count as equals carry water and wash feet at his sacrifice. I saw wealth that would shame the gods. Either I will win that glory for myself, or I will not go on living. Help me, uncle, or watch me waste away."

Shakuni, whose mind was as crooked as his gait, smiled a thin smile. He had his own grudge against the Kuru house, an old and private wound, and he had long waited for such an opening. "You cannot defeat the Pandavas in war," he said softly. "Arjuna alone could turn back your whole army, and Bhima would break your bones like dry reeds. But there is one field on which Yudhishthira is weak. He loves the game of dice, yet he plays it badly, and his honour will not let him refuse a challenge. And I, nephew - I have never lost at dice in my life. Leave the rest to me."

Shakuni held up the dice he carried always, dice cut, men whispered, from the bones of his own dead father, dice that fell at his command as if they were alive and obedient. "Invite Yudhishthira to a friendly game," he said. "He will come. He will stake, and he will lose, and he will keep staking because he cannot bear to walk away dishonoured. Without a single arrow loosed, his empire will pass into your hands."

Duryodhana's eyes lit with a dark joy. The plan was perfect. There remained only one obstacle - his father.

Together Duryodhana and Shakuni went to the blind king Dhritarashtra and laid their wish before him. Duryodhana spoke first of his misery, then of the dice, careful to dress the scheme as harmless sport between cousins. "It is only a game, Father," he pleaded. "What cousins may not play at dice? Invite Yudhishthira here. Let him come and match his fortune against ours."

Dhritarashtra hesitated, for though his eyes were dark his heart was not entirely so, and he loved his nephews after a fashion. "Let me first consult Vidura," he said, "who sees further than any of us." And Vidura, the wise half-brother whose counsel was always true, came and spoke plainly. "This game will bring ruin," he warned. "Gambling sows discord. It will set son against nephew and tear the Kuru house in two. I beg you, do not allow it."

But Duryodhana would not be denied, and the king, as he always did, gave way to the son he could never refuse. "Fate is stronger than counsel," Dhritarashtra murmured, half to comfort himself. "If it is destined, who can prevent it? Let the hall be built, and let the invitation be sent."

So a great gambling hall was raised, with a hundred doors and a thousand pillars, glittering with gems, and Vidura himself was sent, against his own conscience, to carry the summons to Indraprastha. He went heavy-hearted, knowing he bore an arrow aimed at the very kinsmen he loved best, yet bound by his duty to obey the king.

When Vidura arrived in Indraprastha and delivered the king's invitation, Yudhishthira read at once the shadow behind it. He turned to Vidura and asked him directly, "Uncle, you who never speak falsely, tell me - is this game wise? Will good come of it?"

Vidura answered with the honesty that was his nature. "I do not approve of it. I came because the king commanded me, not because my heart consented. Gambling is the root of quarrels. I beg you to refuse."

Yudhishthira weighed the matter, and a hard thing weighed upon him. By the code he lived by, a Kshatriya did not turn away from a challenge issued by his elders and kin. To refuse the summons of Dhritarashtra, the head of the house, would be to insult the throne of his fathers. And there was, buried deep beneath his righteousness, a flaw he could not master - the gambler's certainty that the next throw might fall in his favour.

"The whole world moves at the will of the Ordainer," Yudhishthira said at last, his voice quiet and resigned. "I am bound by my vow never to refuse when challenged, whether to war or to play. Dhritarashtra is as a father to me, and I will obey his call. If fate has decreed our ruin, then to ruin we shall go. But I will not break my word."

So the Pandavas set out for Hastinapura, with Draupadi and their mother Kunti and a great retinue. The road that had once carried them home in triumph now carried them, though they did not yet know it, toward the longest sorrow of their lives.

The gambling hall of Hastinapura blazed with light. Beneath its painted ceiling sat the elders of the Kuru line - the grandsire Bhishma, the teacher Drona, his son Ashwatthama, the wise Vidura, the brahmin Kripa - and ranged among them the hundred sons of Dhritarashtra, with Karna at Duryodhana's right hand. The dice cloth was spread upon the floor, and the ivory pieces gleamed.

Yudhishthira entered and made his courtesies, then took his seat. "I am here at your bidding," he said. "Whom shall I play against, and with what stakes?"

Duryodhana answered for himself. "The wealth and the jewels will be mine to stake," he said. "But my uncle Shakuni will cast the dice on my behalf."

Yudhishthira frowned. "One man wagers and another throws? This is not how an honest game is played. It seems against all custom." A murmur passed through the elders, for he had named the very heart of the unfairness. But the challenge had been made, and his vow held him fast.

"If you fear my uncle's skill," Duryodhana taunted, "you are free to withdraw and shame yourself."

The word shame did its work. "I withdraw from nothing," Yudhishthira said. "Let us begin." And Shakuni took up the dice in his crooked hand, weighed them lovingly, and smiled at the king across the cloth. "The stakes are laid," he said. "Let us see how fortune favours you." He cast - and from that first throw, the dice fell exactly as he willed.

"I have won," Shakuni said after the first cast, and the word would become a refrain that hammered through the hall like a funeral drum.

Yudhishthira staked a string of priceless pearls, beautiful and pure, won in the churning of the ocean. He lost. He staked his treasure chests heaped with gold and the inexhaustible coffers of his kingdom. He lost. He wagered chariots of war hung with golden bells, swift horses bred in the western lands, herds of elephants in their thousands. With every throw Shakuni called out the same two words, "I have won," and with every throw a fresh portion of the Pandava fortune passed across the cloth.

"I stake a thousand serving women," Yudhishthira said, "skilled in song and dance and decked in gold." He lost them. "I stake my menservants, obedient and loyal, and the cattle and the goats and the sheep of my dominions." He lost them all. The mountain of his empire's riches was being carried, load by load, to Duryodhana's side of the hall, and still the king cast on.

Vidura could bear it no longer. He rose and turned to the blind king. "Hear me now," he cried, "even if my words are bitter as medicine. This Duryodhana is a jackal born to destroy the Kuru race. Cast him out before he devours us all. Better to abandon one son for the sake of the family than to lose everything for the sake of one son." But Duryodhana only laughed at the steward, and Dhritarashtra sat silent, and the dice rolled on.

A fever had taken hold of Yudhishthira now, the gambler's fever, where reason drowns and only the next throw matters. His brothers watched with rising dread, for they saw what he could not - that the dice were bewitched, that no honest run of luck fell so cruelly in one direction.

"I stake the wealth of the cowherds and the borderlands," the king said, "all the gold and silver and bronze of the realm." He lost it. "I stake my city, my fields, the land itself, and the homes and goods of all my subjects save the brahmins." The dice fell, Shakuni spoke his two words, and a whole people changed masters in an instant.

Then, with nothing of his lands and treasure left, Yudhishthira's eyes fell upon his own kin. "This prince Nakula," he said slowly, "dark and lion-eyed, beloved of all - him I stake." Shakuni cast. "Won," he said. "Sahadeva, wise in counsel, learned beyond his years - I stake him too." Lost. The two younger Pandavas now belonged to Duryodhana.

Shakuni leaned forward, his voice silken. "Yet Arjuna and Bhima you still keep, the dearest of your brothers. Surely you do not love these two less. Will you not stake them as well?"

"Wretch," Yudhishthira whispered, "you seek to sow division among us, who are five fingers of one hand." But the fever spoke louder than his love. "Arjuna, on whom my whole house leans - I stake him." Lost. "And Bhima, who has never known defeat in battle - him too I stake." Lost. One by one the unconquered Pandavas were thrown away across a cloth of woven gold, and the assembly looked on in horror.

Now Yudhishthira sat with nothing. His gold was gone, his kingdom gone, his servants gone, his four brothers gone. Around him the hall had fallen utterly silent, and even the boldest of the Kauravas held their breath at how far the ruin had run.

Shakuni's voice broke the stillness, gentle and merciless. "You have lost much, O king. But you still possess one thing of value. You still have yourself. Stake your own person. If you win, you may yet recover all that has slipped away."

Yudhishthira looked down at his hands. Some last fragment of him knew that he should rise and walk from that hall, that the dignity of an emperor demanded he stop. But the fever held him, and the desperate hope that one good throw might undo every bad one. "I stake myself," he said. "If I lose, I become your slave."

Shakuni gathered the dice. He cast them down. They rolled, they settled, and he spoke the words that had become a knell. "I have won."

Yudhishthira, emperor of the world, anointed in the great Rajasuya sacrifice, was now a bondsman in the hall of his cousins, owning not even his own body. The four brothers beside him were slaves likewise. It seemed there was nothing left in all the earth that the Pandavas could lose. And then Duryodhana, his triumph not yet complete, leaned forward with a glitter in his eye, for he saw that one possession remained.

"There is one treasure you have not yet wagered," Shakuni said, his words falling into the hush like drops of poison. "The princess Draupadi, daughter of Drupada, queen of the Pandavas. Stake her, and if you win, you redeem yourself and your brothers and all you have lost."

A shudder ran through the assembly. To stake one's wife was a thing beyond the boundaries of decency, an act no honourable man should so much as imagine. Bhishma's brow darkened. Drona looked away. Vidura half-rose from his seat. Even some of Duryodhana's own men felt shame prickle their skin.

But Yudhishthira was no longer wholly himself. The madness of the game had hollowed him out, and the cruel hope that he might win everything back with a single cast blinded him to everything else. In a voice that did not sound like his own he began to speak of her - of Draupadi, fairer than any woman in the three worlds, neither too tall nor too short, her hair dark and long, her eyes like autumn lotuses, gentle and wise and devoted to her duty. "Such is she," he ended, "and her I now stake against all that I have lost."

A roar of dismay went up from the elders. "Shame! Shame!" the wise men cried, and Vidura covered his face in his hands. But Duryodhana and his brothers slapped their thighs in savage delight. Shakuni took the dice for the last time. "Hear me," he said. "Let this throw decide." He cast. The dice tumbled and lay still. "I have won," said Shakuni.

Duryodhana rose, drunk on victory, and his voice rang through the thousand pillars. "Draupadi is won. She is now a servant of our house, no better than the women who sweep our floors. Go, Vidura, and fetch the proud queen of the Pandavas. Let her come and learn her new station and dwell among our serving maids."

But Vidura, white with anger, would not stir. "You speak like a man already dead," he said. "You bind a noose about your own neck. A woman won by such a game was never lawfully won, for she was staked by a man who had already lost himself and so possessed nothing. Reflect, Duryodhana, before you hang yourself upon a tree." He would not carry the message, and he warned them all that this deed would call down the destruction of the Kuru race.

Duryodhana's face twisted with contempt. He turned instead to a servant of the court and commanded him to bring Draupadi. The man went trembling to the women's quarters and stammered out his master's order. Draupadi heard it in disbelief.

"Go back," she told him, drawing herself up, "and ask the gambler this question before the whole assembly. Whom did he lose first - himself, or me? For a man who has lost himself is no longer free, and a slave owns no wife to wager. Let the elders of the court answer whether I have been lawfully won at all." Her question, sharp as a sword, was carried back into the hall. But Duryodhana had no patience for questions. He turned to his brother Dushasana, whose cruelty matched his own, and gave the order that would stain the Kuru name forever. "Bring her," he said. "Drag her here if she will not come."

Dushasana sprang up like a hound loosed from its leash and strode toward the inner chambers. Draupadi, hearing his heavy step, fled toward the apartments of the Kuru women, hoping to shelter among the elder queens. But Dushasana caught her by her long dark hair - the very hair that had been sanctified at the imperial Rajasuya - and dragged her stumbling toward the assembly hall.

"Let me go," she cried. "I am in a single garment, I am not fit to be seen. Have you no shame, to lay hands upon a queen?" But he only laughed and pulled the harder. "Slave, servant, won at dice," he sneered, "you may call yourself queen no longer."

So Draupadi was brought into the hall of a thousand pillars, half-clothed and dishevelled, her eyes blazing through her tears, before the grandsire and the teacher and the hundred princes and her own five husbands, who sat with their heads bowed in helpless shame, bondsmen now, unable to lift a hand in her defence. She stood there and looked upon that assembly of the wisest and mightiest men of the age, and she put to them the question that none of them could answer.

"I ask the elders of this court," she said, her voice trembling and yet unbroken, "is there no dharma left in Hastinapura? Whom did my husband lose first, himself or me? Was I lawfully staked, or do you mean to disgrace a free woman before the eyes of her family? Speak - is there not one righteous man in this hall who will answer me?"

The question hung in the silence like a held breath. Bhishma looked at the floor. Drona said nothing. Dhritarashtra's blind eyes stared at nothing at all. And in the hearts of the five Pandavas, a vow began to take shape, terrible and patient, that would one day be written in blood upon the field of Kurukshetra. What followed in that hall is another sorrow, and another story.