Though frightened, Somvat was fascinated by the way the Yaksha kept changing voices, sounding sometimes like himself and sometimes like, in all likelihood, Shikhandi.
The Yaksha continued, ‘On his wedding night, Shikhandi’s wife noticed that her husband’s body was no different from hers.’ The Yaksha laughed, ‘Listen to this: Drupada had convinced young Shikhandi that his manhood would emerge on his wedding night in the presence of his wife. Can you believe such a thing? Shikhandi managed to convince his bride of this too. Innocent little thing! So the two spent all night waiting for the manhood to emerge and as you can guess,’ the Yaksha paused for effect, ‘nothing emerged. Both went to their respective fathers. Shikhandi’s father said the wife was useless; they should look for another one. The bride’s father, the king of Dasharni, sent a courtesan to Drupada with a warning that if Shikhandi failed to prove his manliness to her satisfaction, the Kshatriyas of Dasharni would release their fire-arrows and burn Panchala to the ground.’
As the Yaksha spoke, Somvat forgot all about the situation he was in. The fetters. The dungeons. The fear of losing his head. He was completely enchanted by the story. ‘What happened then?’
‘Shikhandi ran out of Panchala, suddenly confronted by the truth of his body. He tried to drown himself in the river. I saved him. Or should I say her? I asked him, “What do you think you are, a man or woman?” “I am not sure,” he said in a voice that was definitely not a man’s. “My father insists I am a man. So does my mother. But my body is just like my wife’s,” so saying he untied his dhoti and lowered his uttarya. I tell you, it was the most perfect woman’s body I had seen in a long time, marred by rough muscular arms. Lotus-bud breasts. Smooth round hips. I know human women. I have been with lots of them. Manava women invoke Yaksha men using magical formulae because we provide them with the greatest satisfaction; Yaskshas are hung like donkeys, you see, thick and black and long. Just like you.’
Suddenly aware of the Yaksha’s grip on his manhood, Somvat tried to pull away. The Yaksha’s grip tightened. ‘Where do you wish to go? Where can you go?’ said the Yaksha glancing at the chains round the boy’s ankles and wrists. ‘Now let me finish this story. I felt sorry for Shikhandi. I picked her up and put her on my lap and wiped her tears and comforted her. She was a girl. A little girl raised as a boy. Confused. Embarrased by the princess of Dasharni. Afraid of being the cause of Panchala’s destruction.’ The Yaksha paused. Somvat noticed that the Yaksha had compassionate eyes. ‘I felt sorry for him. I told him that I would grant him my masculinity and take on his femininity. Then he could be a man with the courtesan sent by his father-in-law. After that he could be a man with his wife. And then with as many women as he wished. But only until the following new-moon night. On that day he would have to return my manhood to me. I told him a fortnight was enough for him to teach a lesson to all those women who want him to be a man,’ Sthunakarna chuckled.
‘What do you mean teach the women a lesson?’ asked Somvat.
With a conspiratorial look, the Yaksha said, ‘It’s a Yaksha’s secret that few humans know. Women who know it never share it with others out of shame and spite. A Yaksha man can go to a Manava woman only if she calls him, you see. But he can go to her only once, never again. If a woman seeks a Yaksha in lust, she is left with a terrible insatiable itch that no one can cure. If a woman seeks a Yaksha in love, there is no itch; instead she ends up bearing a child even if she is an old hag.’
‘Is that true?’
‘As I told you, the laws of nature that apply to Manavas do not apply to Yakshas. If Shikhandi’s wife came to him in love she would become the mother of his child. If she came to him in lust she would suffer a terrible itch forever. A deserving punishment I must say,’ Sthunakarna bared his teeth in glee.
‘How many women have you given the itch and to how many have you given a child?’ asked Somvat.
‘Ten itches but no children. Look at me, who will fall in love with a Yaksha. They want us only for one thing.’ Sthunakarna’s thoughts went back to the women who had compelled him to come to them with the magical formula: a farmer’s frustrated widow, a fisherman’s demanding wife, a queen of an impotent king, a merchant’s impatient daughter, an old doctor’s young wife…a long list, extending back to the days of Ila. Three hundred and forty years earlier. That’s how old he was.
The itch that followed intercourse with a Yaksha was Kubera’s way of getting back at Manava women who used Yakshas for pleasure and then discarded them without a thought. It was said the king of Yakshas still nursed a broken heart. From the shadows he would watch all the women who had ever summoned Yakshas thrash about in bed trying in vain to get satisfaction from other men, or from other substitutes: fingers, vegetables, false manhoods fashioned out of wood and clay, even animals. ‘Who told them to call a Yaksha?’ Kubera would say gleefully. Sthunakarna found his king’s delight pathetic and perverse. But he never said a word. Kubera did not like being judged.
Sthunakarna turned his attention back to Somvat. Somvat was looking at his groin, ‘So where is it? Your manhood that Shikhandi was to return in fifteen days?’
Sthunakarna started to bawl. ‘What was supposed to come back in a fortnight has not come back even after thirty years and may never come back!’ He started hitting his head against the wall. Then suddenly he stopped, sat up, turned to Somvat, skewed his eyes and said, ‘Unless you help.’
‘Me?’ Somvat’s fear returned.
‘Yes. Shikhandi left with my manhood clinging to his body and I waited for the new moon night for him to return. The moon waned, then waxed, then waned again. He did not come. So I went to Panchala. Ordered him to return what was rightfully mine. Threatened him with dire consequences if he refused. “My wife refuses to come to me,’ he said, “and said what she saw on the wedding night is her only truth. That I will always be a woman to her. Husband but not man. Let me be a man till the night she calls me to her bed. I beg you.” Fool that I am, I agreed. I thought his wife would change her mind in a few days. But she refused to do so. The stubborn bitch. Days turned into weeks, weeks to months, months to years. Thirty years. Draupadi was born, the Kuru lands divided, Indra-prastha rose and was gambled away. The Pandavas went into exile and returned. I waited and waited for Shikhandi’s wife to call her husband to bed. Meanwhile, my body transformed. I grew breasts. A slit formed between my legs. I grew a womb. I was just getting used to be being a woman when the Pandavas invited Shikhandi to fight alongside them in Kuru-kshetra. Just before he rode into battle, his wife finally let him do what he should have done on their wedding night. I expected my manhood to return that very moment. But it did not.’ The Yaksha put his tiny hands on his large head and pouted like a little girl.
Despite the feeling of dread building up in his heart, Somvat could not help smiling. The whole story was so bizarre. He felt sorry for the Yaksha whose compassion had cost him his manhood. ‘Why was that?’
‘A mystery,’ said the Yaksha, jumping up. ‘I went to Alaka-puri and questioned my king, Kubera. He kicked me on the head and said, “Serves you right for showing compassion to a human. You know how they are.” Then he laughed and all the Yakshas laughed with him. “Now that you are a woman you should stay a woman. We can all have fun with you,” he suggested. I kept quiet. Did I tell you Kubera has a very nasty sense of humour? And he hates humans, uses them as beasts of burden. Rides on their backs as Shiva rides on a bull. After much harassment he told me why the manhood clung to Shikhandi’s body. “His wife sought him in love. Her withered womb has bloomed with a child. The manhood therefore clings to the father and will go nowhere. Such is the law of Prajapati.”’
Sthunakarna had asked Kubera ‘What is to become of me? How will I become whole again?’
Kubera had replied, ‘Find a man who wants to become a woman. Take his penis and give him womanhood in return.’
‘Do such men exist?’
‘You have just lost your manhood to a woman who wanted to become a man. Then the
re must be a man out there willing to give up his manhood to become a woman,’ Kubera had said.
‘And that is why I come before you,’ said the Yaksha to the boy dressed as a woman, incarcerated in the dungeons of Vallabhi for duping the three wives of Yuvanashva. ‘Accept my womanhood. Give me your manhood. And there is a chance that they will set you and your friend free.’
‘That was just a passing thought. I don’t want to be a woman. I am happy as I am,’ said Somvat.
‘But you want to stay alive, don’t you? As a man who duped three queens there is little chance of that.’
Somvat imagined himself being dragged outside the city, near the cremation ground, being shoved against the chopping block. The smell of blood of previous offenders permeating through the rotting wood. The swoosh of the axe. The crack of the spine. Blood pouring out of his tongue. Dead eyes wide open. ‘I don’t know what is worse: dying as a man or living as a woman?’ His feet were cold, his palms sweaty.
‘Life is any day better than death,’ said Sthunakarna, ‘The body does not matter.’
‘It matters whether you are man or woman,’ said Somvat. ‘A woman is not free; she has to obey her father, husband and son.’
‘What have we here? An intellectual!’ Sthunakarna said sarcastically. ‘No one is free in this world. Even men are fettered to their lineage. They must be their father’s son. Look at you. Can you escape marriage? Are you free to enter the shrine of the goddess on your own? Do you really want to be a Pujari? Your life has been laid out before you and you cannot escape it.’
The Yaksha let go of Somvat’s feet. Somvat brought them together. The chain clanked. ‘Women bleed. They become inauspicious every month. Have to be kept away. I don’t want that.’ He felt the wetness of sweat between his thighs. Was this how the wetness of menstrual blood would be?
‘If you bleed, you will have the power to create life in your body. Feel the kick of a child from within. Feel milk ooze out of your nipples. No man knows that pleasure. It is the greatest pleasure in the world,’ said the Yaksha.
‘There is no pleasure in childbirth. I have heard women scream.’
‘That is more than made up for while making a child. Kama is kinder to women than to men, you see. Women get more pleasure during sex than men.’
‘How do you know?’
The Yaksha smiled. ‘I have been a woman for thirty years.’ He put his little stubby fingers into his ears and moaned ecstatically. Somvat turned away in disgust. ‘You have been with a woman. I can smell her on you. After you spilt your seed you were ready to move away weren’t you? But she was just getting started. A woman can take more lovers in a night than a man ever can. This frightens Manava men so they bind their women with marriage.’
Somvat’s mind wandered to his seventh night with the wife of Trigarta, the horse-herder, who unable to father a child himself, having gone to numerous astrologers and doctors and socerers, had finally invited Somvat to perform niyoga on his wife. After he had spilt his seed, he felt the horse-herder’s wife squeeze his hand, as if telling him not to stop or pull away. He did not understand it then. Now he did.
Somvat imagined Sumedha as his lover, between his legs. The grip of thighs round his waist. Muffled moans of the horse-herder’s wife. Her fingers scratching the floor resisting the urge to hold him, afraid of the husband who was watching it all. Strange thoughts entered his mind. New thoughts. Unthinkable thoughts. ‘No, no,’ he said, his body suddenly warm. ‘I will have to do what Sumedha tells me. Follow him like a maid. Cook him food. Clean his house. Answer to his every whim. No, no, I don’t want to be a woman.’
Sthunakarna sensed the waves of warmth in Somvat’s body. He had started thinking about becoming a woman. ‘Yes, yes, you must,’ the Yaksha persisted, ‘You are only sixteen. Don’t be so attached to your body that you end up losing your life. Bodies come and go. Like old clothes to be worn at birth and discarded at death, you see. Do not value it so much. Say yes. Say yes. You have known what it is to be a man. You have been with a woman and created life outside your body. Now, you have the opportunity to be a woman, be with a man, create life inside your body. You will live a full life.’
‘No, I don’t want to bear children. I don’t want to give my manhood up. There is no guarantee that the king will spare me,’ said Somvat, a wave of panic engulfing him suddenly.
‘Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me,’ yelled the Yaksha, jumping up. He began to cry and slap himself. ‘Can’t you see? It will save your life. You will have a man who will take care of you. And you don’t have to pretend to be powerful. You can shed all the tears you want.’
‘I will never be able to show my chest to the sun. Covered always, bared only for Sumedha and the children I will bear him.’ The words tumbled out without thought. Children he would bear Sumedha. Images flashed before his eyes. A small house. A kichen fire. Rice boiling. Sumedha sitting on a mat playing with their child, singing a song, a love song. He cutting vegetables grown in the kitchen garden feeling a kick in his womb. He smiled. It felt good. A sense of tranquil familiarity. Stability. Order. Marriage to the two daughters of Kaveri would have drawn them apart. They knew it. Still they had submitted to it with little thought. But here was an option. Should he grab it? ‘Yes,’ Somvat said suddenly.
‘Yes, what?’ croaked the Yaksha.
‘Yes. Make me a woman. Give me a chance of life. A better life, maybe.’
In an instant his manhood was gone. Sthunakarna was gone. In the dungeon, chained to the wall, was now a woman called Somvati.
That’s when the dream ended and a new reality opened up.
transformation
The sun rose. A man ran into the city shouting, ‘It is over. The war is over. All the Kauravas are dead and the victorious Pandavas will soon enter Hastinapuri triumphant on five bejewelled elephants.’
But no one in Vallabhi was interested in what this man had to say. Everyone had heard something unbelievable that had taken place in the dungeons. And they were more interested in knowing the truth of this matter.
The Danda-Nayak stood in the corridor between the queen’s audience chamber and the Turuvasu mahasabha. On one side was Shilavati. On the other side was the king and his three wives. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
Not knowing whom to address, the Danda-Nayak bowed his head and said, ‘Something strange has happened. I cannot explain it.’
‘What is it?’ asked Shilavati, ‘Has something happened to the boys?’
‘Yes and no,’ he said, sounding clearly disturbed.
‘Speak up,’ said Yuvanashva.
‘Patience, my king,’ said Shilavati.
Yuvanashva glared at his mother. He was tired of being ordered around. The Danda-Nayak sensed the tension. He spoke up without raising his head. ‘When we fettered the boys last night, we were sure they were boys. But today morning, one of them, the one dressed in the sari, the one who was pretending to be a woman, turns out to be a real woman.’
Pulomi and Keshini gasped. ‘What!’ exclaimed Simantini.
‘He has become a woman,’ the Danda-Nayak repeated softly, realizing how ridiculous his words sounded.
‘Have you been drinking?’ asked the queen.
‘No, Devi. Yesterday I saw the boy. We all saw the boy. He was trying to drape his red sari like a dhoti. We saw his hairy chest. We did not let him. We told him to remain dressed as a woman. That is how we wanted to present him in court. We said he should not be shy of showing the world the masquerade with which he tried to dupe the queens.’
The Danda-Nayak did not recount the vulgar language used. How his guards used sticks to prod the boy’s gentials and his anus, asking him what functioned better. He did not recount how they made him undress and dress as a woman several times through the night, threatening to let the dogs chew his testicles if he did not obey. When he said he was thirsty, the guards refused to give him water until he urinated in the corner, crouching like a woman. Later, out of pity for the whimpering b
oy, they had left him alone and turned their attention to the ‘husband’ and asked him what he did on the wedding night. The scared boy had given no answer. He simply wept.
‘Today morning, when the sun rose, we saw the boy, who calls himself Somvati, sitting in the corner looking pale and scared, clutching his sari against his chest. We told him to stand and we noticed the contour of his body had changed. His gait had also changed. He looked towards the floor and refused to raise his head. When one of my men caught hold of his arm, he flinched and screamed in what was undoubtedly a woman’s voice, quite different from the voice heard the night before, ‘I am a married woman. A chaste woman. Don’t touch me or you will die.’ We thought he had gone mad. We held him by force. He resisted. His sari got undone. We saw on his chest a pair of perfectly shaped breasts. We withdrew. We did not know what to believe. We believe only what we saw. And we saw a woman, who the previous night was a man.’
A long period of silence followed. Everyone tried to make sense of what they had just heard. Then Pulomi spoke up, ‘What does it matter what we saw yesterday. It is a good thing that he is a woman. That means we were not duped. We gave a cow to a Brahmana couple not to two men. We have earned no demerit.’
‘Yes, yes. Let us look no further. Let them go quietly and forget about what happened,’ said Keshini. She did not want the two boys to die.
Simantini nodded in agreement.
The previous night, the three queens were insisting the boys be killed for disrupting their ritual. Now, they were more than ready to let them go. Yuvanashva was not sure what decision to take.