The Brother Who Would Not Take a Side

The armies were already gathering when Balarama walked into the Pandava camp. He came with Akrura and Uddhava and a crowd of Vrishni heroes, tall and fair in garments of blue silk, like the white peak of Kailasa. Everyone there stood up for him. Yudhishthira took his hands and sat him down on his own seat.

Balarama looked at his brother Krishna, and then at all of them.

"This slaughter is coming," he said. "It is fate, and nobody can stop it now. I only hope I will see every one of you come out of it alive and whole."

"I told Krishna, again and again, in private: we are related to both sides equally. Duryodhana is as close to us as the Pandavas. Help them both the same. He would not listen to me. His heart is with Arjuna. So the Pandavas will win, because that is what Krishna wants. And I cannot bear to face the world without Krishna beside me, so I will not stand against him."

Then he told them the rest.

"Bhima and Duryodhana both learned the mace from me. They are my pupils, both of them, and I love Bhima exactly as much as I love Duryodhana. I cannot sit and watch the Kurus destroyed. I am going to bathe in the holy waters of the Sarasvati."

He would not let Krishna walk with him. He took the Dwaraka priests and the sacred fire of the city, and carts of gold and cattle and clothes, and went away up the river, feeding the hungry and giving gifts at every ford, while the war was fought without him.

He was up in the Himalaya, near the source of the Sarasvati, when Narada found him, his vina in his hand.

"It is over," said Narada. "Bhishma has fallen, and Drona, and Karna, and Shalya. Duryodhana hid at the bottom of a lake, and the Pandavas taunted him until he came out with his mace. He is going to fight Bhima today. If you want to see your two pupils fight, go now."

Balarama sent his people home to Dwaraka, climbed into his chariot and drove hard for Kurukshetra.

They were standing ready with their maces when he arrived. The Pandavas and Krishna ran to welcome him.

"Forty-two days since I left home," he said. "I set out under the star Pushya and I am back under Shravana. I want to see my two pupils fight."

At his word they all went to Samantapanchaka, the holiest ground of the field, and he sat down to watch, fair among the kings like the moon among stars.

It was a long, terrible fight. And at the end of it Bhima swung his mace low and broke Duryodhana's thighs.

Balarama leapt up with his arms in the air.

"Shame on Bhima! Shame!" he shouted. "Below the navel, in a fair fight! The rules of the mace forbid it!"

He snatched up his plough and ran at Bhima.

Krishna caught him. He threw his arms round his brother and held on, the dark one and the fair one locked together like the sun and the moon in the evening sky.

"Bhima swore in the assembly that he would break those thighs," said Krishna. "A sage cursed Duryodhana that it would happen. The Pandavas are our own aunt's sons. Do not give way to anger, slayer of Pralamba."

Balarama was not persuaded.

"Bhima will be known in the world as a crooked fighter," he said. "Duryodhana fought fairly, and his glory will last for ever."

He climbed into his chariot, like the crest of a white cloud, and drove away to Dwaraka, and everyone he left behind on that field was sad to see him go.

In the Bhagavata, too, Balarama heard that the Kurus and the Pandavas were getting ready for war, and since he would take neither side, he left on the pretext of bathing at holy places.

His road led to the Naimisha forest, where the sages rose to greet him. One man did not rise: Romaharshana, a pupil of Vyasa, who sat in the teacher's seat above them all. Balarama thought that his learning had taught him no humility, and he touched him with the tip of a blade of kusha grass, and Romaharshana died.

"Alas!" cried the sages. "That was wrong."

Balarama agreed to make amends. He made Romaharshana's son the teller of the old stories in his place. For the sages he killed the demon Balvala, who fouled their sacrifice every new moon. And for his penance he walked for a year round the whole land, by the Kaushiki and Prayaga, by Gaya and the mouth of the Ganga, down to Kanchi, Shrirangam and the southern sea at Kanyakumari, and back up the west to Prabhasa.

There brahmins told him that every king in the war was dead. He hurried to Kurukshetra, where Bhima and Duryodhana were circling each other with their maces.

"Stop," he told them. "You are equal. One of you is stronger, the other more skilled. Neither of you can win. This fight is useless."

Neither would listen. Each was thinking of what the other had done to him.

Balarama saw that it was fate, and went home to Dwaraka.