The Gambled Queen

By Anmol Sharma

Oh, what a divine Sabha this is, where wisdom is seated on golden thrones yet lies gagged under cowardice, and dignity is sold cheaper than dice!

I see grey hair and wrinkled faces hidden in hands, shutting out the reality that stands against them, in approval of injustice, as if age alone grants them the license to stay silent. Kings and elders, is your hearing reserved only for the roars of men who gamble away queens like livestock? What a grand spectacle this is, a kingdom’s honour being bartered, and the mighty Bhishma, the so-called ocean of wisdom, drowning quietly in a puddle of political convenience.

Vidura speaks, but his words are drowned under the weight of your glorious neutrality, O king Dhritarastra! You crane your neck and peer towards the fatal table to see everything but justice. How generously you distribute lectures on morality when your throne is not shaking! The king of Bharata, blind by birth; but today, you have become blind by choice.

Why stop with me? Perhaps you should gamble away your oaths, your crowns, your ancestors’ honour. After all, what better entertainment than watching dharma strangled in public view? And husbands! You call yourselves guardians of dharma. How noble, how saintly, to watch your wife, dragged by her hair and yet act on silence like it’s a virtue! You have no right to call me your wife!

It is poetic how valiant warriors, lionhearted kings, sit still as stone idols, proving once again that silence is the loudest applause for tyranny. Dushashan’s laughter still drips venom as he parades me like a trophy of his brother’s sin. This Sabha has become blind and deaf and numb, even when he is mocking my helplessness, swearing he will strip me bare before these very elders who sit like stone idols. If this is the legacy of elders, then may history carve their names in shame. For what use is wisdom that cannot roar when a woman is dragged into hell?

Remember, oh mighty ones. The fire you have fed today shall one day rise as the inferno of Kuruvansh, and it will not differentiate friend from foe.

When the world asks what destroyed the Kuru dynasty, tell them it wasn’t Sakuni’s dice, nor greed, nor Duryodhana’s lust. It was the sacred cowardice of elders who chose to watch and not to act.  If no mortal here can rise for truth, then let this court know when ‘he’ will choose to act; not one of you will be able to hide behind your thrones, your vows, or your excuses.

Because where all of you failed… ‘he will succeed’.

By Anmol Sharma