Anger Management
by Sunil Iyengar
Anger Management
episodes from the Mahabharata
1 Each morning dropped a tremulous rage into his belly, or points just north. He couldn’t excrete it, try as he might. Mimicking hunger for all it was worth— as if parathas and ghee could assuage it, born and reborn from a slight real or imagined. But mostly real, the prince assured himself. Hadn’t they mercilessly taunted him in youth? * Even their exile couldn’t outweigh the contempt he felt, or mask the truth: his cousins transmitted star appeal among his father’s subjects, and why not? His father, after all, was blind. They in a manner were demi-gods. Who wouldn’t prefer to fall behind such a procession? No one applauds the old and infirm, though some may try meeting them halfway. The king’s bride, Gandhari, when she learned who her mate was to be, insisted a silk shawl cancel the light for good. She denied herself the gift of watching them crawl— her hundred sons—and simmered in hate. 2 But what it did to him! A mother who, though ever-present, could not know the colors he wore, or how his face filled when his pride first began to show. From both of his parents, not one trace of true recognition. In another birth, he might have been saved from his own interventions—yes, if only he had the kind of mother who would commit a searching gaze to him. Left alone, he lacked a censor to check each fit or tantrum he threw. This made him mad. 3 A myna shrieked outside. Very good, the prince reflected. Yes, that’ll do to summarize my state: insolent and unregarded. He himself flew as if a tedious struggle were meant with every wing-beat. By rights he should careen just as his cousins, past care despite the plots he’d set them: the wax palace, the game of dice and what followed— * thirteen years. He didn’t once relax throughout their exile. Instead he wallowed in doubt. Soon he must prepare for all of it, the fallout from a rage so comprehensive he couldn’t see its moving parts—the tingle that climbed the back of his neck when, from the stage, his cousin Arjun refused to be challenged by one of low birth. Ill-timed it may have been, but the prince rose at once and hugged the charioteer’s son. “Because you defied my foe, “your shameful lineage disappears. “I’ll crown you king of Anga. It goes “without saying you’ll take up the bow “when the war comes, and fight in my train.” (The latter wasn’t spoken aloud.) Another instance, one that still broke his sleep on most nights, was when Bhima vowed to smash the prince’s thigh. He awoke each time in a cold sweat, and in vain regretted his foolish brother’s act— to drag the Pandava princess when she had been won by the Kauravas. “Boys will be boys and men be men” was the prevailing mood. They attacked her honor and gave the cousins cause to justify the people’s support should they choose aggression. Therefore he called them back for a final game. 4 A third indication of the coming war involved the arrival at his father’s court of that cowherd-king of recent fame who, as he claimed both sides his kin, assumed the role of negotiator. “Just five villages, one for each should be enough to quell them.” Much later, the prince couldn’t credit his counter-speech: “The dirt that hangs on the point of a pin— “I won’t even part with that much land.” Krishna left, but it seemed with a smile. Much later, the prince would understand when, all his brothers reduced to a pile of ash, he screamed at the hulking back of the accursed Bhima, who’d laid him out. “Cowards, all! You didn’t fight fair.” Krishna motioned. “Ignore his shout,” he urged. “You’ve won. Now walk away.” 5 The prince had one power. It was to stay immersed in a lake. He couldn’t keep track of the hours he spent in his watery lair. Same as this morning, a month from the war. He dove straight down until he touched the lakebed. There he meditated on all the reactions that awaited him for his folly. They swam before his face, like mottled eels he clutched after but could not hold. Too dark for anyone to find him, but too dark also for him to find an answer more appropriate than wrath. Or else one escaped his mind without so much as leaving a mark.
Sunil Iyengar is the editor of The Colosseum Book of Contemporary Narrative Verse (Franciscan University Press) and the author of a chapbook of poems, A Call from the Shallows. Samples of his published poems, book reviews, and essays may be found at www.suniliyengar.com.
Poet’s Note
My poem alludes to scenes from the Mahabharata, one of the two ancient Sanskrit epics. The anachronistic title, “Anger Management,” refers to the central conundrum of the epic’s main villain, Duryodhana.
Like many Indians or the descendants of Indians, I don’t read Sanskrit, so have relied instead on numerous translations, oral retellings, Indian comic books, and an Indian TV serial. Another decisive influence has been Peter Brook’s 1989 film adaptation.
The poet, critic, and translator Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982), friend to the Beats, complained about the inadequacy of most English translations of the Mahabharata. Yet he observed:
The faults are not all in the English. Hindu literature by our standards is decadent from its prime foundations. Overspecialization, proliferation, gigantism—like Hindu sculpture, Indian poetry and prose have a jungle profusion that sparer cultures can never assimilate.
While I would severely qualify Rexroth’s claims, I share his frustration with the epic poem’s resistance to periphrasis and, it may be, to translation in general.
For readers unfamiliar with the source text, therefore, what follows is not a summary of the Mahabharata, but a prose distillation of key elements from the epic as they pertain to my poem.
Duryodhana is the oldest son of the blind king Dhritarashtra and his wife, Gandhari. As a bride-to-be, she had chosen to wear a permanent blindfold, the better to identify with her assigned husband.
The prince and his 100 brothers (!), the Kauravas, are sworn enemies of the Pandavas, five brothers born of gods. The Kauravas and Pandavas are cousins and grew up together.
In an archery contest, Arjun—the most famous Pandava because of his later role in The Bhagavad-Gita—spurns a challenger, Karna, the adopted son of a charioteer. Duryodhana instantly befriends Karna, crowning him king of Anga.
Jealous of the Pandavas’ brilliance, Duryodhana tries to dispose of his cousins by lodging them in a wax palace and setting it ablaze. He also arranges two dice games with the oldest son of the Pandavas and cheats them of their possessions.
At the end of the first dice game, his brother Dushasana drags the Pandava princess, Draupadi, by the hair and attempts to disrobe her. Bhima, another Pandava, vows to break Duryodhana’s thigh. Much later, this fantasy is realized when Bhima lures Duryodhana from a lake where he had been hiding—the ability to stay under water for long periods of time being a special power of the Kaurava prince—and lands the fatal blow.
At the end of the second dice game, the Pandavas are exiled for 13 years. Upon their return, Duryodhana refuses to give back even a pinprick of their land, despite Lord Krishna (originally a cowherd) negotiating on their behalf. The great war of the epic begins.