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Love Stories from The Mahabharata  
Parikshit and Sushobhana – 7

A lovely garden enveloped in the shade of massive trees—palm, myrobalan, deodar, wood-apple—overhung with hundreds of fragrant, flowering creepers. As though challenging the frown of the fierce summer, every grass, creeper and flower of this thickly forested garden, having drunk the nectar of bird-song, is vibrantly alive. Parikshit quenched his thirst with water from a lake covered with lotus leaves. Plucking the stalks, he gave the horse to eat. Then, for easing his fatigue, he lay down on the soft grass in the shade of the newly budding leaves of a bakul tree.

Parikshit’s pleasant drowse is soon broken. Curious, he sits up.  The gentle forest breeze seems to be filled with the strumming of the vina accompanied by a melodious female voice that entrances the ear.

King Parikshit gets up. He roams the forest looking at the base of every tree. Finally, he sees that on the mossy banks of that lake is seated a woman with a moon-stone gleaming in her hair, agitating the blood-red lotuses swaying in the ripples of the lake with gentle strokes of her lac-reddened soles, creating a lovely pattern with the pride of her youth. Touching the strings of the vina held in her hands with fingers like champaka-petals, that woman is singing melodiously.

Entranced, King Parikshit keeps gazing. Is that a human form? Or the beauty of the forest itself embodied? Or a goddess-of-amrita, who has emerged from the waters of this lake?

King Parikshit advances and stands before the unknown woman.  Ceasing to sing, she glances at Parikshit. Now Parikshit is able to see that even finer and cooler than the radiance of the moonstone in her hair are the rays cast by those doe-like eyes.

Parikshit speaks, “Who are you, doe-eyed one?”
“I do not know my identity.”
“Your father? Mother? Country?”
“I know nothing.”
“I cannot believe this, O lady with lips like red fruit. This slender waist encircled with bejewelled chains, that pure white throat gleaming with pearls, your breast decorated with vermilion designs, that moon-stone in your hair, and this seven-stringed lute—are these signs of having no identity?”
“My identity is myself. Other than this I know nothing.”

Silently, Parikshit goes on staring.

The woman questions, “What are you looking at, honourable Sir?”
“I am wondering whether you are unique or an illusion.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Ikshvaku Parikshit.”
“Now you can leave King Parikshit. You have no need of this person without any identity, brought up in the forest.”
“I have a duty.”
“What duty?”
“I wish to take you to the comfort of the beautiful begemmed royal palace. This forest-life does not become you, lovely-eyed one.”
“I understand. Generous Parikshit, concerned for his subjects’ welfare, wishes to fulfil his royal duties. But I have no desire for royal grace, O King.”

– Continued

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