Some oppositions find no use for vocal means to be conveyed. Humane bearing suffices to connect them to be conveyed from those who meant to oppose the other.

Duryodhan certainly needn't be a clairvoyant to sense what was going on underneath the calm countenance that his wife bore.

Yet, the vocal wording of her mutiny would calm him, for he had no telepathic abilities to communicate the reasons of the vehemence he bore to Krishna's proposal.

His eyes were goading those ethereally beautiful brown orbs of hers to align themselves in sight with his, but they, in all their unspoken resistance seemed immune to him. His own fingers longed to twine themselves with her vermillion-decorated ones, that were mechanically set on the pursuit of tending to the wounds he had chosen to corrode himself with, as souvenirs of his acrimonious vitriol his anger fostered.

He kept scrutinizing her form, while she carefully applied a turmeric preparation to a gash on his shoulder. He felt a minuscule of a tingle on the wound, but he chose to ignore it, since Bhanumati's silence stung him, to a considerably greater measure than that shred of abrasion that lay on his skin.

-'Does it sting?'- Duryodhan felt her lips move.

That faint question momentarily disoriented him from the reverie he was in.

-'Did you say something?'- he asked, almost sounding frivolous.

Bhanumati sighed, letting her breath caress him briefly from afar.

-'Does your shoulder sting?'-

Such a simple question warranted no prelude, or even the slightest contemplation of an answer. But it was quite an effective precursor of a conversation, he noted.

-'No.' came a terse reply, as if he were building the premise for a parley, requiring diplomatic mettle.

There was a long, yet brief pause. Duryodhan noted the significant hardening of Bhanumati's jaw, providing him with the apt platform for his initiation.

-'Are you angry, Bhanu?'

Another sharp, rose-scented breath came to affirm the retort to his query, from his taciturn spouse.

-'You must understand, my love,'- he began, in resignation, hoping to provide a reason comprehensible enough to qualify as a persuasion.

-'What do you wish me to understand, Arya?'- she finally spoke, her reticence still making itself too evident to be missed.

This certainly was no confabulation, he concurred. To make himself sound convincing to her reason was a task that needed a fair amount of thought.

-'War is a necessity, Bhanu.'- he began, evaluating the validity of every syllable that he uttered, -'It is not as easy as you might assume.'-

Whoever thought war was easy to assume for a conclusion? , she mentally snorted.

A foregone conclusion, at that, someone whispered within her.

'Love',- he softly spoke, with something that alluded at a phantom hint, that bordered on amusement, -'Did you really prepare yourself for a conclusion that went on another path?'

His question needed nothing new to be answered. With the attitude and the supercilious disposition that he had, with the acerbic animosity that he housed for his cousins, it was nothing but an Utopian fantasy, unattainable in all its imagination to expect anything else from him.

But what of the obstinate shred of hope that persists in one's heart, to dissuade the being from the complete possession by an apprehensive assumption? What of that meaninglessness expostulation of optimism?

What of the comfort that it provided?

-'No.'- she sighed. -'Reason wouldn't allow me to accept any other conclusion.'- Bhanumati, finally looked at him. -'Yet, I had unreasonably made a wasteful trifle of an investment in the hope, that you would'-

She stopped, allowing her breath to speak for her.

-'Consider.'- he finished it for her, his lips curling upward in a knowing smirk-

-Only to be answered by a mutinous glance.

'Consideration would only stall an eventuality.'- he reasoned.

Eventuality? , he made it sound so simple, like it were a wrestling technique he were explaining to Lakshman.

-'War is no consequence for fraternal strife.'- she said. -'Kaanha didn't ask you for a fortune. He didn't want anything but five villages'-

-'That are a part of my kingdom.'-

-'Which isn't solely yours'- she relentlessly emphasized.

-'They do not have a right on anything!'- he stubbornly added -'If they wish to set claim on even a speck of dust that finds its existence in here, they should grow a spine, and fight, rather than sending that trickster with a peace proposal for the sake of mere exhibition of their conformity to Dharma!'

Bhanumati's jaw hardened even further. A strife rose within her being. And this was no clash of opposing emotions, this was one that urged her to choose between fear and premonition.

Sometimes, even fear was acceptable for a Kshatriya, she thought.

This war would result in the extirpation of whole clans that inhabited the sacred Land of Bharata.

This wasn't just about the victor and the vanquished. Wars had these permanent conclusions.

But who would really be victorious, with so much blood gracing the land they fought in? Would it not be sacrilegious to the sacrifices of those that had strived so hard to bring it to the prosperity that it now had?

Washing away all those accomplishments, like they were effaceable-

Was a carnage that easy?, pondered she.

-'Don't think about it, my love.'- he assured her. 'This prospect doesn't trepidate me.'

-'But why? Why a war?'-

-'It is but a consequence of what we've sown. My cousins wouldn't really opt for another alternative either, nor did they expect me to do so.'

Bhanumati looked uncertainly at her husband, who reciprocated warmly with a soothing smile.

'You must rest.' she said, abruptly and tersely, as if she wished to stay away from him for a while. For some inexplicable cause, he preferred solitude too.

She left, in a silence that echoed a subtly disproving note in the tinkling of her anklets as she left the chamber.

***

She aimlessly took to a stroll in the palace to provision her with a meek sense of comfort, hoping that the mild exertion of that brisk walk would dissuade her thoughts. But, that exertion wasn't physical, in the very least, since her stubborn contemplations took the oft-beaten path, much to the chagrin of her will.

No tunes came to her, neither did those occupations that had kept her busy during the days that preceded the baleful evening of the benighted Dice Game. She couldn't engross her fingers in the occupation of a new embroidery for his favourite angavastra, nor could they paint a new picture in different colours, that would possess the beauty of the one that made them. No words came to her to place themselves in an aureate verse of a poem. For such divertisements were only a comfort to a peaceful soul.

They didn't find the need to soothe a mind mired in such violent turbulence.

A wind blew through the stillness of the night, somehow meaning to accentuate the outline of the other quarters that stood magnificently therein, as if it meant to augur the gloom they would be laved in, as the aftermath of the war they were so eager to fight.

She turned away from the sight of the royal gardens facing her, and chose to interest her eyes to the sight of the immobile pillars that stood tall in the palace corridors, symbolic of the solidarity of the Kurus.

Finally, as if weary of deriving portents in everything her eyes lay themselves on, they finally found a silhouette of a man seated on a bench, gracing them.

She softly neared it, her instincts ensured themselves of no impending harm.

The lineaments of the seated man became more prominent as her sight gained clarity.

The unmistakable semblance they bore to one she admired so dearly. The thisness of that lean frame, the aura that he exuded even in the characteristic gravity of his bearing.

He smiled warmly when he saw her. She didn't miss the phantasm of an incongruity in his eyes, that seemed strangely anomalous. Somehow his presence, reminded her of his absence, during the course of the slight ruckus that had been caused after the incidents in the Sabha.

Yet, his presence comforted her.

-'Have you turned into a nocturnal, Bhanu?' he asked, amused.

She heaved another sigh of relief.

-'Radheya!' - breathed she. 

***

Notes:

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