My trials, tribulations, triumphs and more... - Arjuna.

Chapter 6: Journey to Hastinapur

After the shocking tragedy, we all kids (me, Nakul and Sahadev) were distraught and gloomy but surprisingly we found Kunti mata to be in control and she put up a brave face and wanting us kids to forget this tragedy soon and move on with our life. So, was the case with Yudhi bhai, he too never showed his true emotions to us. Even though Bhim bhai used to be calm and composed in front of us but we saw him few times weeping bitterly, when he was alone in the ashram. Kunti mata was a very strong and brave woman, even at this time of tragedy, she never forgot her primary responsibility, which was to ensure her kids have a better life and she must have realized that, now she has to play a dual role of being both pitah and matah to us. Apart from her there was no one who could guide and take care of us. With this mindset, she called us to assemble in the evening at the outskirts of the ashram and took us to the nearby lake and made us sit on the grasslands and then started giving her talk.

Kunti mata revealed to us how special each one of us was and the origins of our birth. Even though, we were already accustomed to hearing of murmurs and rumours around the ashram regarding our births, and that we were conceived through some mantras and by the blessings of various Gods, but our parents never discussed those details with us anytime earlier. So, it came as a surprise to us, when Kunti mata revealed all of this in detail to us. I guess she wanted to instil a feeling of confidence and positivity in us, so we have greater aims and purpose in life and not live life with dejection and negativity. Her talk was quite motivational and we were all spellbound. She declared that we are born as Kshatriyas and it was primary duty to protect the weak and needy and fight against evildoers. She told us, how our father Maharaj Pandu dreamt that his children will grow into being great warriors, and noble individuals, and how they would rule the kingdom with justice and empathy and bring great fame and prosperity to the lineage and make the entire Aryavarth proud. She revealed to us, the loud proclamations heard from the sky ('Akashvani') during our births, how Yudhi bhai will become a great emperor, how Bhim bhai would turn into strongest man on Earth, how I would turn into greatest warrior of Aryavarth, how Nakul would turn into a great physician and how Sahadev would turn into a most knowledgeable person and so on.

She said, we all should live up to the expectations of our father and make all his dreams come true and make him proud with our accomplishments and righteous conduct. She said, our father will be satisfied and attain permanent peace up in the heaven only when their children accomplish all that which was proclaimed during our births. This motivational talk given by our mother was definitely a stepping stone in our path to achieving great deeds in our future. Now, we all brothers got clarity of what our aims and goals in our life would be and how we should strive hard to realize those.

On that night, we found how astute and brave woman our mother was. From that day onwards her singular purpose in life was to see us realize our full potential and make the dreams of our father come true. We all knew how immensely our mother loved our father Maharaj Pandu but after that tragic night, she never once did openly cry in front of us regarding that tragedy, this clearly showed how strong our mother was and how she wanted her kids to emulate her in this regard of being tough and overcoming all odds. I could say this was one aspect where I feel I fell a bit short, as I was an emotional and sensitive individual and was not very ruthless when dealing with people and situations. And, it was very difficult for me to be hard on any person. May be, because of my nature to not hurt anyone and try to make everyone happy, landed me in trouble and made my life difficult at times. I always wanted to emulate my father Maharaj Pandu in gladly accepting any challenges of life and not brood over destiny but overcome difficulties even at the cost of making personal sacrifices. This quality of mine I certainly owe to my upbringing and influence of our father Pandu.

After that motivational talk by our mother, she made us all brothers make a promise to her, that whatever may be the situation and how adverse conditions we could be in, but we brothers will always remain united and support each other. She told us that from that day onwards, Yudhi bhai will act as a leader of our group and we all should follow him and obey his instructions. And, at any cost, we should not be questioning him and she extracted a promise on that from the rest of us. It is because of such promise we made to our mother, that at various difficult times in our life, we had obey our eldest brother and not raise our objection even though we knew he was not doing the things correctly. Following such order from our mother, made our life difficult on several occasions. We were brought up in such an environment, where everything did or told by Yudhi bhai was supposed to be correct and final. I'm recollecting all this now, because when I'm gone there will not be anyone to clarify our viewpoints and on why myself and Bhim bhai had to keep our mouths shut and not protest against Yudhi bhai openly, even when we had to face the most humiliating incident in our life. Arjuna/Bhima never feared fighting against any warrior or facing any weapon but we feared not to break our promise given to our mother. The main takeaway from this experience for me was, we should always be open to ideas and thoughts from all concerned and only after careful consideration take a decision and it should not matter if the solution provided was by a younger one or the eldest one. I can very well understand the point of view of our mother too, she had her own practical reasons for doing such, because she wanted a cohesive unit of Pandavas devoid of any friction and since Yudhi bhai was eldest, so we all kids should automatically obey him at all times.

After the talk by our mother, we went back to our ashram and after sometime late in the evening, couple of messengers from Hastinapur came to us with a message from our Pitamah, bade Pitashree, and kaka Vidur inviting us to Hastinapur and start our life afresh there. Pitamah and kaka Vidur had to rush back to Hastinapur immediately after the funeral rites of our father, as they got a secret message that some hostile kings were planning to mount an attack on Hastinapur in the absence of our Pitamah. So, we kids did not get much of a chance to interact with our Pitamah and kaka Vidur at our ashram.

Next morning, our mother made us to dress neatly and tie our hair properly, specially mine which was thick and curly, so we all look good in front of our elders and relatives. I was very eager to meet and interact with our Pitamah and ask him questions related to the battles he fought and various weapons he wielded, as those stories of our Pitamah were so fondly told by our father to us. It was a long and tiring journey from our ashram to Hastinapur and by the time we reached Hastinapur it was already late in the evening and what we saw next was something which I could not forgot ever in my life.