The Python's Questions

In the later years of their forest exile, the Pandavas dwelt for a time high in the wooded slopes of Mount Gandhamadana, that holy mountain in the far north where the air was thin and cold and the woods were full of strange beasts and stranger sages. There they lived simply, the brothers hunting for the household and guarding Draupadi, and the days passed in quiet hardship.

Mighty Bhima, strongest of the five, often ranged far ahead of the others in his hunting, for no beast of the forest frightened him and his arm had never met its match. He had slain demons and uprooted trees and carried his brothers on his back across flooded rivers. In all his life he had never met a creature he could not overpower. That was about to change, and the lesson would come not to his arms but, strangely, to his elder brother's wisdom.