Restless, wanting to act

चक्रव्यूहThe wheel

Droṇa drew up the Kaurava army in the shape of a great wheel, the cakravyūha, ring inside ring, and set in it the finest warriors of the age: Droṇa himself, Karṇa, Kṛpa, Aśvatthāmā, Śalya, Duryodhana and his brothers, king after king. Jayadratha stood at its mouth. The Pāṇḍavas came at it and broke on it like water on a mountain. 7.33.12 to 20, 7.34.8

Yudhiṣṭhira said what was true. None of us knows how to break this. Four men do: Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa, Pradyumna, and you. There is no fifth. Arjuna was fighting far across the field, with Kṛṣṇa at his reins. Of the four, only the youngest was there. 7.34.14 to 17

द्वारThe door

He did not pretend. My father taught me how to break in, he said. If danger comes, I do not know the way out. 7.34.19

उपदिष्टो हि मे पित्रा योगोऽनीकस्य भेदने।
नोत्सहे तु विनिर्गन्तुमहं कस्यांचिदापदि॥Mahābhārata 7.34.19

Yudhiṣṭhira said: Break the array. Make a door for us. We will follow you, child, by the way you go. 7.34.20

भिन्ध्यनीकं युधा श्रेष्ठ द्वारं संजनयस्व नः।
वयं त्वानुगमिष्यामो येन त्वं तात यास्यसि॥Mahābhārata 7.34.20

He knew the way in and not the way out. And he chose to go, because somebody had to open the door.

Then he said: Today every creature will see the enemy’s hosts driven in herds by one child. And Yudhiṣṭhira answered: As you speak, may your strength grow. 7.34.26 to 27

शिशुनैकेन संग्रामे काल्यमानानि संघशः।
अद्य द्रक्ष्यन्ति भूतानि द्विषत्सैन्यानि वै मया॥Mahābhārata 7.34.26

His charioteer, Sumitra, begged him to think. The load is too heavy. Droṇa is a master of every weapon, and you were brought up in comfort. Abhimanyu laughed. Who is this Droṇa? I would fight Indra on his elephant with all the gods behind him. Drive. 7.35.3 to 8

अकेलाAlone

Behind him the Pāṇḍavas rushed for the door he had opened, and Jayadratha held it against all of them. Not one got through. 7.35.15, 7.41.6, 7.42.17

So he was alone inside the wheel, one against the best of the age. He did not wait for anyone. He went round them like a whirled firebrand, Droṇa, Karṇa, Kṛpa, Śalya, Aśvatthāmā, Duryodhana, the kings and the princes, and the great army shook, again and again. 7.38.5 to 8

His enemies said it themselves. Droṇa, his father’s own teacher, watched him with his eyes wide with joy and said: I know of no archer in battle who is his equal. 7.38.9 to 13

नास्य युद्धे समं मन्ये कंचिदन्यं धनुर्धरम्Mahābhārata 7.38.13

Later, again: only the circle of his bow can be seen; I see no difference between him and Arjuna. And Karṇa, struck again and again by his arrows: I am standing only because a warrior has to stand. 7.47.20 to 25

Then Droṇa told them the only way. With his bow in his hand, not the gods and the asuras together could conquer him. Take his bow and his chariot first. 7.47.30

सधनुष्को न शक्योऽयमपि जेतुं सुरासुरैः।
विरथं विधनुष्कं च कुरुष्वैनं यदीच्छसि॥Mahābhārata 7.47.30

So they did it together. Karṇa cut his bow. His horses were killed, and his charioteers. Six great chariot-warriors poured their arrows on one child, without pity. 7.47.31 to 33

त्वरमाणास्त्वराकाले विरथं षण्महारथाः।
शरवर्षैरकरुणा बालमेकमवाकिरन्॥Mahābhārata 7.47.33

पहियाThe wheel he lifted

Bow gone, chariot gone, keeping to his own dharma, he took up a sword and a shield and leapt into the air, and moved through the sky like Garuḍa, the king of birds. 7.47.34 to 35

स छिन्नधन्वा विरथः स्वधर्ममनुपालयन्।
खड्गचर्मधरः श्रीमानुत्पपात विहायसम्॥Mahābhārata 7.47.34

Droṇa cut his sword off at the hilt. Karṇa broke his shield. There was nothing left in his hands. 7.47.37

Nobody gave him one. So he came down to the earth, lifted a chariot wheel, and ran at Droṇa with it. The dust of the wheel shone on him. He stood with the wheel raised high, his hair blown back by the wind, and the poet of the Mahābhārata saw Kṛṣṇa: adorned with Viṣṇu’s own weapon, he shone in the battle like a second Janārdana, hard to look at even for the gods. 7.47.38 to 39, 7.48.1 to 2

विष्णोः स्वसानन्दिकरः स विष्ण्वायुधभूषितः।
रराजातिरथः संख्ये जनार्दन इवापरः॥Mahābhārata 7.48.1

वीरगतिVīragati, the way a hero goes

They cut the wheel to pieces. He took up a mace and fought on, on foot. Duḥśāsana’s son came at him with a mace of his own; they struck each other and both went down. Duḥśāsana’s son rose first, and as Abhimanyu was rising, struck him on the head. One against many, he fell. 7.48.3 to 13

Where he lay, the poet says, he was like a forest fire that has burned the whole forest through, and gone quiet at the end of winter. 7.48.15

तं तथा पतितं शूरं तावकाः पर्यवारयन्।
दावं दग्ध्वा यथा शान्तं पावकं शिशिरात्यये॥Mahābhārata 7.48.15

He did not lose. A man who goes into the wheel knowing there is no way out, who stands alone against the best in the world, who keeps his dharma when his bow is gone and his chariot is gone and his sword is gone, and lifts a wheel out of the dust when there is nothing else: that man has won before the end comes. Whether he falls is not the question. The standing was the victory.

मोड़The turn

His father did not forget. That evening Arjuna came back from the far end of the field and was told. He cried out, my son, and fell to the ground. When he rose, shaking, with tears in his eyes, he made a vow before them all: tomorrow I will kill Jayadratha, who held the door. If the sun sets and he is alive, I will walk into the blazing fire myself. 7.51.16 to 37

यद्यस्मिन्नहते पापे सूर्योऽस्तमुपयास्यति।
इहैव संप्रवेष्टाहं ज्वलितं जातवेदसम्॥Mahābhārata 7.51.37

He drew his bow, Gāṇḍīva, and its sound rose over every other sound and touched the sky. Kṛṣṇa blew his conch, Pāñcajanya, and the world shook as it shakes at the end of an age. The next day Arjuna cut his way through the whole of Droṇa’s host, and before the sun went down it was done. 7.51.40 to 42, 7.121

This is where the Mahābhārata turns. The boy who went into the wheel alone woke the whole fire of Arjuna, and after that night the war was never the same war. One stand, inside the wheel, turned it.

चक्रव्यूह में तुमYou, in the wheel

Every Jyotirgana is Abhimanyu. He went into something that was eating at his village, his family and himself. He knew the way in. Nobody had taught him the way out. Perhaps he did not even know, going in, that it was a wheel.

And everyone else is outside. The family, the doctor, the counsellor, the police, the government: they do what they can, and they mean it, and they stand at the door like the Pāṇḍavas, held back. Inside the wheel there is only him. Every day inside is a battle, and he fights it alone.

The world outside called him a loser while he was in there. Abhimanyu was never a loser. He did not take his name from what was shouted at him. He did not let the army round him tell him who he was. He stood. When the bow went, he took a sword. When the sword went, he lifted a wheel.

So the one who went into the wheel is not the one who failed. He is the one who went in where no one else would go. That is what a warrior is. And the day he stands up inside it, whatever comes after, he has already won. That standing turns more than his own war. It wakes the fire in the ones who love him, and it makes a door for the ones who come after.

The story: the Mahābhārata, Droṇaparvan, 7.33 to 7.51 and 7.121, in the critical edition of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, read in the GRETIL e-text; the verse numbers are that edition’s, and the telling in English is ours. The Hindi verse: Maithilīśaraṇ Gupt, Jayadratha-vadh (1910), the first sarga, as printed by Sahitya Sadan, Jhansi; the page numbers are that printing’s, and the English of his lines is ours. That the war turns here, and what it means for you, is our reading.