Pregnant King, The Read Online Free PDF

her. ‘Don’t. Just enjoy the sight. Feel the bird flying. Don’t reason with it. Experience it. This is life as it should be, Bharya.’
    She loved that he addressed her as Bharya. Bharya. Wife. Vishnu’s Lakshmi. Shiva’s Shakti.
    Prasenajit asked her once, ‘Do you know why Ileshwar becomes Ileshwari every new moon night?’
    ‘No,’ said Shilavati.
    ‘I think because he loves his wife so much they merge into each other with the waxing and waning of themoon. They are not two, but one, as man and wife should be. As you and I will be.’
    Once, while wandering in the woods, they came upon the carcass of a wild buffalo teeming with maggots. ‘How disgusting,’ cringed Shilavati.
    ‘I don’t think the maggots will agree with you,’ said Prasenajit. Shilavati realized the wisdom in her husband’s simple words. The human way is not the only way in this world.
    Prasenajit encouraged Shilavati to use his bow. ‘Women are not allowed,’ she said.
    ‘Rules are made for the city. In the jungle, desire reigns supreme. You get what you want, if you are willing to fight for it,’ said Prasenajit, showing her how to place the arrow and draw the string.
    Shilavati remembered her great joy when she shot her first arrow. The sense of achievement. He picked her up, placed her on his shoulder and ran along the river bank, announcing her victory to the uninterested birds of the forest.
    When a year had passed, Shilavati became proficient with the bow but there was no sign of a child. Pruthalashva grew impatient. His queen said, ‘My lord, keep your anxieties to yourself. Don’t burden your son with them. If what the stars speak is the truth then our son has but a few more moons to live. Let him enjoy it in peace.’
    Seventeen months after her marriage, Shilavati showed signs of pregnancy. When the midwives confirmed she was with child, Pruthalashva said, ‘Now I can retire into the forest.’
    Mandavya dissuaded him. ‘Let the child be born.’
    ‘How much longer?’ Pruthalashva complained.
    The women of the palace celebrated the news by decorating the entire palace with bright orange Genda flowers. They bathed Shilavati, fed her, dressed her, entertained her. They never left her alone. She was not allowed to go on hunts. Shilavati missed the forest.
    ‘Our son was conceived in the forest,’ Prasenajit told her. ‘Near the bilva tree, when we heard a lion roar, and you were scared.’
    Shilavati remembered how Prasenajit distracted her with a kiss. Their love-making, stoked by fear, was passionate and intense. It was in the open, in daylight. But she did not mind. She did not care for the monkeys who stared from the branches overhead or for the peacock she saw creeping up from the corner of her eye. She felt like the Asparas who glide on river streams. Prasenajit was her Gandharva slipping out of a spring flower. There was more pleasure on the forest floor than in the palace bed. She could moan and shout and scream without inhibition. She could make demands. Or submit without embarrassment. She let the soft grass on the forest floor caress her back, her breasts, her thighs, her buttocks as her husband made love to her.
    ‘Maybe I conceived a daughter,’ said Shilavati.
    ‘I am too much of a man to father a girl. Even the stars agree, Bharya,’ said Prasenajit.
widowhood
    Then, he died. Her dear friend. Her beloved husband, the only one who could call her Bharya. Leaving Shilavati all alone.
    It happened in the palace. In the safe space guarded by Kshatriyas. A serpent slipped in unnoticed. Prasenajit stepped on it as he got out of bed, just as the astrologer predicted in the eighteenth year of his life, two years after his marriage, two months before the birth of his son.
    The fangs struck and the poison spread. He was blue before anyone got to him. ‘My son, my son, oh my son…’ Pruthalashva cried and collapsed. He could not bring himself to cremate his son. The Kshatriya elders had to substitute for