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.

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Part 2 & 3 shall be uploaded over alternate days