Being Arjun
Satata-pravasi (perpetually away)
The youngest child is a special child. Much loved by parents, much pampered by the older siblings. Shielded, guarded, showered with affection.
But what happens when the dynamics shift and the youngest child suddenly becomes the middle brother? Not the eldest. Not the strongest or even the handsomest. And definitely not the one who’ll ultimately inherit the throne. Just the middle brother, although the greatest archer in the world. And what happens when that very excellence keeps sending him away from home?
Ask Arjun. Kunti’s youngest, Drona’s dearest, Draupadi’s husband fair and square, but never at home.
What is home, though?
Straw for a seat, ground to sit upon, water to wash the feet and face, and sweet words.
(Udyog Parva, section XXXVI)
And why is Arjun never at home? The reasons are many.
The first is, on the face of it, domestic. The brothers had agreed that whoever entered the room where Draupadi was present with her husband of that year would, forthwith, be banished for twelve years.
Things were running fine. And then a brahmin came with a problem. His cows had been driven away by rustlers, and he was beside himself with anger that such a thing could happen under a Pandava rule. Arjun immediately rushed out to the armoury to pick up his bow and quiver. And there he found Draupadi and Yudhishthir. Why Yudhishthir chose the armoury, of all places, to spend time alone with Draupadi is a question the epic, tellingly, leaves open.
The Pandavas had just been given Khandavprastha. They had just finished months and months of hiding from their murderous cousins, and had just settled down in what was, perhaps, their very first owned home ever. They had just got themselves a new bride. And Arjun, the reason why the bride was even won, had to now leave, to be away for years together.
So he leaves. And wanders all over the land.
It is telling that the epic calls these two sequential episodes Rajya-labh-parva (the acquisition of a kingdom) and Arjun-vanavas-parva (the exile of Arjun). No sooner had a home been acquired that Arjun was exiled to preserve the harmony of the very home he had played a large role in creating. It is the beginning of a pattern: the Pandavas settle into domestic life and Arjun leaves shortly thereafter.
Not long after his return from exile, Arjun, along with his best friend Krishna, cleared away a big patch of forest and got the best architect in the world to build them a palace, the likes of which no one had ever seen before. Soon after shifting into this wonderous palace, the oldest brother and king, Yudhishthir, decided to do a grand complicated yagna called the Rajasuya. The remaining four brothers, Arjun included, were despatched on army missions to extract vows of suzerainty from other kingdoms. Arjun was sent north.
The northern campaign of Arjun’s was paralleled by three of his brothers (who went east, west, and south). The epic is rather too explicit about the contrast:
Thus while his brothers were so employed, the exalted king Yudhishthir, the just, stayed within Khandavaprastha in the enjoyment of great affluence in the midst of friends and relatives.
(Digvijaya Parva, section XXV)
But for the next journey, Arjun was again the sole traveller. The eldest brother gambled away every single thing that the other brothers had brought home, because of which all five brothers and Draupadi had to leave for the forests. After roaming around in various places for a while, Yudhishthir sent Arjun away again.
Get Anindita Basu’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The reason this time was: when the time comes for the Pandavas to claim back what the eldest brother had so injudiciously lost, their cousins wouldn’t willingly hand over everything, and in the war that would inevitably follow, it would help if Arjun was better equipped, and what better way to equip himself than by acquiring weapons of the gods themselves?
So, Arjun left home again. To acquire celestial weapons so that they could all win back the home that Yudhishthir had thrown away in a game of dice.
Things moved fast after Arjun’s return, culminating in the great war and a pyrrhic victory for the Pandavas.
But Yudhishthir wasn’t done yet. He decided to do another complicated yagna called the Ashwamedh. And this time, it was only Arjun who was despatched, in the footsteps of the horse whose hooves would stamp the territory over which Yudhishthir ruled.
It was a somewhat stressful journey, in that Arjun had to encounter, first-hand, the ravages of the just concluded Great War. Toddlers on the throne, empty treasuries, and then there was that matter of him being killed by his own son (and revived by one of his wives).
A little after his return, Arjun’s mother left home for spiritual retreat into the forests. And a few years thereafter, Arjun was despatched yet again, this time to look into some disturbing news about Dwaraka.
But this journey was heart-breakingly different. Arjun did not just leave home this time, he went to another home that had ceased to exist as he had known, loved, and sported in. Dwaraka was gone.
Arjun stood before the heaving sea with folded hands, and hurled his grand bow and divine quiver into it. His refuge had disappeared; his prized weapons were no longer of any use.
He returned to Hastinapur only to depart again, this time for ever, along the snow-sprinkled paths in the Himalayas.
When asked about his ten names once, Arjun had mentioned Shweta-vahan, “he whose chariot is pulled by white horses”, as one of them. He might well have added another, Satata-pravasi , “one who is forever on the road”. Perhaps home, for him, was never a fixed abode. Perhaps he carried his refuge with him. For, hadn’t the good lord himself said,
अनिकेतः स्थिर-मतिर् भक्तिमान् मे प्रियो नरः
One with no fixed home and unflinching devotion in me is the one who is exceedingly dear to me.
(Bhagwat Gita, 12.19)
Perhaps that is what Arjun’s secret home was, maybe?
Related: On deaths in the Mahabharat
Data sources: The Indica APIs (and all the books mentioned therein, and then some).
