Storytelling Week Fourteen: Dhritarashtra's Blessing

Never once had he said this. Nor had he ever thought he would say it. But the king was glad that he was blind. Not forever, obviously. But for this particular moment, he did not want to see. He had gathered too much already from his other senses. He could smell death everywhere. He would have known he was on a battlefield the second he breathed in, without anyone telling him. That, or hell. He could smell the blood and sweat and decay radiating from what he assumed were millions of bodies. It was a hot summer day and this only helped to make things ten times worse. But the smell alone could not indicate to the king how many had died here. But he could hear the crowing of the ravens and the vultures that feasted on this land. Never had a vulture wasted a drop of food, yet there was too much for all the vultures in the entire universe to feast on in this field. The king could hear the sounds of thousands of birds, so loud it almost drowned out what his chariot driver was saying to him. Yet, this still did not indicate him the true magnitude of the lives that had been lost here. The king sought for another sense that would tell him of the sorrow that he could not see. So he tasted the water of the stream that ran next to the field. Yet as he drank, the king cried out and spit out the liquid. For what the king could not see was that this river was not clear with water, but ran red with the spilled blood of so many warriors. He stood there spitting the blood of a million men out of his mouth, yet he then could not understand the magnitude of this battle. But finally, the king had his question answered. And his heart broke when he finally grasped what had happened here. This epiphany came not from the earth, the water, or the birds. It came from the women. He could hear them although they were miles and miles downstream. These widows were screaming for their husbands that had died in battle. There tears had turns the dirt road to mud. The hair they ripped out of their heads coated the sides of the road like fur. As the king heard the cries of a million women, he finally understood

 

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Author's Note: The magnitude of this battle struck me so hard. Krishna stated that the men who had died had numbered in the thousands of millions. The world has never seen a battle like that. It would be unimaginable. As I read this, I thought how the king would finally be lucky to be blind. To not have to see the wreckage his son had caused, that he had allowed.

Source: Buck, William (1973). Mahabharata