The Abhimanyu Archetype - Part 3

Krishna’s interruption of Abhimanyu’s learning whilst he had been in his mother’s womb, which went on to play such a pivotal role in his life 16 years hence, has triggered many folktales across India.

According to one such tale, Abhimanyu was actually a demon whose true qualities would have come to the surface had he survived the war. Krishna was aware of this, and through this action, had ensured his death in the war itself.

Another story calls out Abhimanyu as the son of the moon who was cursed to live on earth as a mortal. The moon eventually repented and begged Krishna for forgiveness by finding a way to return his son in the sixteenth year of his mortal life itself, which is what had led Krishna to only partially reveal the strategy of the Chakravyuha to Subhadra on that fateful day.

According to a South Indian folk tradition, the reason for Krishna desiring Abhimanyu’s death was because Abhimanyu had been capable of killing the entire Kauravas all alone and that would have made it impossible for the Pandava brothers, who had taken vows of killing the individual Kauravas.

The last & most sinister reading is that Krishna had always known how much Arjuna loved his son. Only the death of his son at the hands of his teacher would goad Arjuna to take the war more personally and fight more intensely.

Despite his heroic exploits, when it comes to folklore, there is a cynicism associated with Abhimanyu. The source of folklore may be hearsay, but the life of Abhimanyu serves as a classic example of the adage, “Beware of half-knowledge”!

As part of the routine methods enabling the jail inmates to discover a mental self-retribution for their crimes whilst behind bars, the Maulana of the jail had exposed them to holy texts and discussions. The iota of guilt that had seeped into father’s mind since Operation Atanka had only grown inside him like a cancerous tumour when he had read and understood the Quran in its true light. Reflections on the early teachings of Mullah Omar had made him realize the differences in interpretations of the same text by varied individuals as per their mental lens and meaningful misreading of the verses.

By his early 20’s, it had taken him a re-reading of the Quran a few times over to internalize the real advocacy of Islam based on the principles of morality & justice. Introspection on his early life & experiences had made him rebut his misplaced assumptions of HeJ as an entitled Islamic executioner in the wake of the newly-found Islam-propagated use of reason, argument & prayer for resolving problems. As time progressed, discussions with other inmates on the Quranic teachings of collective force as a way of combating mischief-mongers only when reasoning had failed made him question his earlier khilafat beliefs of a single Muslim rule.

Meanwhile, the HeJ had approached mother to induct me into their ways but father had voiced his strong resistance and had reflected on his own upbringing to clarify that he would respect my choice of my future only after I attained a more mature age to be able to make the right choices.

Given the limited evidence against him & good behavior in jail, after spending 15 years in prison, father was released on parole last month.

When I had met him for the very first time, my portrait of him based on his past seemed very disconnected from the transformed person he had come to be. The HeJ however, had seemed intent on his return to the old ways. After release from prison, on frequent insistence, father had met Shezad on a few occasions to clarify his resistant stand, but the group had not intended to let even a ‘lost asset’ get away.

Father was being sucked into the terror whirlpool… Sensing a lost champion of their mission, last week, HeJ abducted both my mother’s and directed father to anchor a suicide-bombing mission in return for their safety.

I met father near the site intended for the Operation today. With an explosive backpack, few circuit boards & wires attached below his army-styled vest concealed under an overcoat, I sensed the look of cautious optimism in his eyes – assured of the well-being of his family, he had come to accept the fact that the only way out of the swirling whirlpool that had come to haunt him time & again, was to be sucked into it completely, once & for all.

Losing any sense of time, he took my hands in his own and sat me down to tell me how he had never intended things to turn up the way they had, how detrimental his half-knowledge had been & how he hoped I would make rightful choices for my future, how I should follow the right path of the Quran in life… how he had wanted to spend more time with me and my mother, how I should take care of both my mother’s as my own…

It was a hurried knock on the door seeking him that had broken our reverie!

My emotional bonding with him had only been of less than a month in person, but had been built mentally over the past 15 years through the eyes of my mother. As the tears in my right eye rolled over my cheek to fall on his feet, I could feel the lump in my throat when I bid him “Khuda Hafiz”! My teary eyes continued to be fixated on his steps… I observed him carefully as he walked to the door.

I knew that time was running out but suppressed the urge to check my watch. I took a deep breath and started counting in reverse under my breath. "Ten, nine, eight, seven..."

                                                   x---------- The End ----------x

The Abhimanyu Archetype - Part 2

At the ripe age of 16, Abhimanyu had fought the Mahabharata war on the side of the Pandavas and killed powerful opponents. Despite his tender age, his valour in war was no less than that of the greatest of warriors. On the 13^th day of the war, the guru of the Pandava & Kaurava brothers, Drona had attacked the Pandava army with the dreaded Chakravyuha formation. Arjuna, the only warrior capable of shattering the formation had been engaged on the far side of the battlefield destroying the lethal chariot-warriors, the Samsaptakas. Given the inability of the Pandava forces to make any dent in the formation, Drona had begun to slaughter their army like a tempestuous fire consuming a forest. With no solution in sight, it was on the insistence of his paternal uncle, Yudhishtira that Abhimanyu had readily accepted his role of breaking into the Chakravyuha, which would allow the Pandava army to escape, but had asked for help to come to his rescue on the way out since he lacked the understanding of breaking out of the whirlpool. Assured of support from Yudhishtira, the young Abhimanyu had plunged in as a moth flings itself into burning fire, single-handedly slaying several warriors who came in his way, including the son of the key antagonist of the Kauravas, Duryodhana.

Upon witnessing the death of his son, Duryodhana had been infuriated and had ordered the entire Kaurava force to attack Abhimanyu. Simultaneously, Yudhishtira’s path was blocked by Duryodhana’s brother-in-law making it difficult for him to return for Abhimanyu’s rescue. Abhimanyu had been left to fend for himself against the entire Kaurava army which had begun to simultaneously attack him against all rules of war. Whilst the eldest of the Pandava brothers, Karna who had been fighting on the Kaurava side, had broken Abhimanyu’s bow & chariot by firing arrows from behind him, the other warriors had surrounded him as hyenas attack an injured lion. Duryodhana’s nephew had engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat with Abhimanyu, who had held his own until his sword had broken and was killed shortly thereafter by a mace that had crushed into his skull. However, Abhimanyu had killed Duryodhana’s nephew with his own mace before dying. The Pandavas trapped outside, had only been witness to the on-goings as Abhimanyu had been hacked to death.

At the ripe age of 16, father had been involved in another key project of HeJ, Operation Atanka with a plot to attack the evening assembly at the Wagah border ‘lowering of the flags’ ceremony. By spreading terror among the people of more imminent attacks prior to the Indian elections, the objective had been to de-stabilize the voting process and ensure a hung parliament. Despite his technical expertise in project supervision, father had needed to get himself directly involved in the Operation when some glitches had come to the fore on the day of execution.

Amongst the claps & cheers of “Pakistan Zindabad” & “Jai Hind” of the crowds, as the sentries from either side had danced their aggressive no-touch tango on the geopolitical fault-line venting their deep resentment & mutual hostility, the 15 kg explosive had accidentally detonated on the Pakistan side of the border only 500 meters away from the crossing point killing 60+ people & injuring over a hundred.

As the leader of the group, father had plunged right in to salvage his team. Whilst the rest from the group had fled and escaped, father had personally called upon each one of his team-mates to check on their status in the midst of the chaos, lest any of them land up in the hands of the authorities. Almost half-guilty of killing his own Muslim countrymen, father had felt trapped in his own emotions when he had personally lifted the half-alive body of a close aide, dragging it to an outside shelter. He had sprinted and almost slipped through the cracks on his way out of the border area when the Pakistani authorities had caught up and taken him under custody.

The rough first-degree murder treatment behind bars by the authorities along with the interrogations stretching into long hours all through the day had been back-breaking for father, especially in the initial few years. With his faith in the ways of the HeJ intact, despite strenuous investigation techniques, my hardened father had remained mute not to reveal anything worthy to the authorities - the HeJ had only been a silent witness to the on-goings from the outside.

x---------- End of Part 2 ----------x

The concluding Part 3 shall be uploaded day after

The Abhimanyu Archetype - Part 1

Arjuna, the great Pandava warrior was married to Subhadra, the sister of Lord Vishnu’s eighth avatar, Krishna. When Subhadra was pregnant with Abhimanyu, she often sat beside Arjuna & Krishna as they discussed the strategy of warfare and combat. Whilst still in his mother’s womb, overhearing the conversations of his father & uncle, Abhimanyu mastered the art of archery & war.

On one such occasion, the to-be born Abhimanyu learnt the technique of attacking & escaping from arrangements of troops in battle arrays or vyuhas; Abhimanyu listened with great curiosity as his uncle explained in detail the strategy of engaging with various offensive and defensive formations right from the crocodile formation of Makaravyuha to the tortoise formation of Kurmavyuha. After explaining all other vyuhas, Krishna narrated the technique of cracking the virtually impenetrable & deadly whirlpool formation of Chakravyuha, knowledge of which was privy to only a few chosen masters of war strategies. Krishna talked about how to enter the Chakravyuha, but when he had started explaining the exit from it, Subhadra had fallen asleep, seeing which he had stopped explaining it any further – as such, baby Abhimanyu had partially learnt the strategy of entering into it, but not the complete art of how to come out of the Chakravyuha. Abhimanyu could not obtain the full technique of breaking all circles in the Chakravyuha, but whatever he had heard his uncle say, he had carefully preserved in his memory.

My grand-mother had been pregnant with my father when the attack by the Harkat-e-Jehad (HeJ) outfit had massacred their existence. Amongst widespread atrocities & destruction, the women-folk especially the pregnant among the lot were taken as captives for they were the seeds that would go on to bear the fruits of the future of HeJ.

The past details are scratchy and only known from hearsay, but going by current arrangements, all pregnant women would have been kept as captives only until their delivery & early lactation, enabling their babies to have a healthy start, after which caretakers would have taken over with the actual progenitors put to rest, their role in the upbringing having been completed. The remnants of my grand-mother and details of my family ancestry are not known any further, but the fact that she had given birth to a son would have assured her of the survival of her child.

As a baby, my father would have hardly been aware of the change of guard in his early years, but he definitely remembers the chilly weather of the hills in which he was brought up, the azan calls of the muezzin from the mosque in the vicinity, the murmuring of the verses of the holy Quran in his ears, the musty smell of the moisture-laden woolen sheets he was rolled in & the high-handed nature of his maiden whose punishments were a form of instruction, hardening his identity from the very start for a rough & tough future ahead.

Abhimanyu had been only 2 years old when the Pandavas had gambled away their kingdom to the Kauravas and had left for the woods on their 13-year exile. The young Abhimanyu had spent his childhood in Dwaraka, his mother’s city under the guidance of his maternal uncles, Krishna & Balarama. He had been trained by Pradyumna, the son of Krishna and Kritavarma, Dwaraka's commander in chief. The combination of genes of a warrior family, inheritance of courage & valour from his father, Arjuna & grand-father, Lord Indra and training from some of the most accomplished warriors of the time, had made Abhimanyu a fearless & dashing warrior. Owing to his early prodigious feats and the ability to hold great heroes at bay in warfare, Abhimanyu was considered an equal to his father.

The adolescent Abhimanyu had fallen in love with Balarama’s daughter, Vatsala, but Balarama was not in favour of their marriage. On Krishna’s advice, Abhimanyu had sought the help of his cousin Ghatotkacha to elope & secretly tie the knot in the forest.

After the 13^th year of incognito exile, when the Pandavas had emerged, Arjuna had come back with a gift for his son – a second wife, the princess Uttari of Matsya, daughter of King Virata. Soon, his second wife was pregnant with their son, Parikshit, who would eventually be the only descendant of the Pandavas to survive the impending onslaught.

My father had only been 2 when the leader of the HeJ, Mustafa had been assassinated by the Indian forces on the border. The new leadership of Mustafa’s younger brother, Shezad, was markedly different with an undertone of revenge for his elder brother’s death & extreme hatred towards the non-Muslim’s, especially the Indians. The tonality of internal communication & command had changed from being paternalistically liberal under Mustafa to being dictatorially directive under Shezad.

It was in such an atmosphere of hostility & extremism that my father was brought up amongst a coterie of boys in the training camps of Nowshera in the north-west frontier of Pakistan. The muscularly-built Iqbal & the stealthy-eyed Mullah Omar had played a key role in his upbringing during his formative years.

The physical on-field training from childhood had involved strenuous aspects introduced by Iqbal which included rock climbing/mountaineering, jungle survival, finer aspects of ambushes & raids, operation of walkie-talkie sets & mock exercises for border crossing to start with and had progressed onto practical demonstrations in concealment, camouflage, reconnaissance & intelligence gathering, training in ambush, sabotage & subversive operations.

As the boys had advanced in age, a select set were chosen for the next level of training that had involved introduction to AK-47 rifles, Chinese pistols, training on sniper rifles, mortars, remote control & wireless communication devices, tank mines, rocket launchers & explosives as well as first aid & para-medical training.

On the other hand, Mullah Omar’s audio-visual training in the madrasa had a profound effect on the psyche of the boys, wherein he had indoctrinated them into the fundamentals of Islam based on the holy Quran through lectures & video films. His teachings had revolved around non-Muslim’s across the globe being born only to be slaves of the Muslim’s under a single rule or khilafat with no sanction to individual rules. He had stressed the importance of the HeJ as an entitled Islamic executioner of those who undertook any unforgivable crime (shirk) or denial of truth (kufr) or apostasy (irtidad).

Whilst they continued to receive formal academic education in a technical background of their choice, the boys were also guided on qualitative skills development to impart leadership traits in team-building.

With an athletic 6-foot personality, an early start into the ways of the Harkat-e-Jehad as a new born, an in-pursuit correspondence diploma in electronics engineering and advanced developmental training during adolescence from the likes of Iqbal & Mullah Omar, my father had gone on to take authoritative responsibilities within the group from his juvenile years. His early wins in the game had given him an adrenaline rush every time a project was successful and had made him popular within the group. He had soon become one of the right-hand men of Shezad in-charge of key assignments.

It was during his teenage years that father had fallen in love with his first wife, Sakina from the adjoining area of Jehangira. With no understanding of my father’s family background, Sakina’s father had not been in favour of their marriage. Father had sought the help of his close aides from HeJ to elope into the adjacent forest to tie the knot.

It was after the successful completion of the Operation Taj wherein HeJ had been able to strike at a few landmark sites on the Indian border that satisfied with his supervision of the entire project, Shezad had come back with a gift for my father – a second wife, my mother, Farida from the Sialkot district. Unable to produce offspring from his first wife, father had readily accepted his gift and soon mother was carrying me, before the imminent rough patch in our lives was about to start.

x---------- End of Part 1 ----------x

Part 2 & 3 shall be uploaded over alternate days