JAJNASENI-Novel by Pratibha Ray

“A creature is bound by the triple thread of the three gunas : sattva, rajas and tamas. Tamas gives birth to attachment. From rajas comes addiction and desire. Sattva produces purity. If tamas and rajas were shackles of iron, then sattva was a chain of gold. Therefore, even though the desire to reach svarg through the Himalayas was sattvik, it seemed to me like chains of gold around my ankles. For, even this had been transformed into an attachment for me. If the desire for getting a kingdom was shackles of iron then wasn’t the desire to attain svarg a chain of gold?

Who was free of attachment? I? My husbands? Could a man who had attachment achieve svarg?

Attachment blinds a person. But to proceed onwards, some attachment, some desire for a results does exist within a person.

Therefore, like a blind man, without considering what is right and what is wrong, he keeps walking on the path, just like us.

While walking on I mused : “What did I get in this birth? What did I lose? Why did I come? What task was accomplished through me? What ought to have been done by me?

Food, sleep, sex, the pleasure of a kingdom, etc – I got everything in life. Still it seems that my life has remained unfulfilled. What is wanting? Why have I borne so much sorrow, grief, pain in life? I feel that with Yudhisthir as husband, any woman will have to suffer…”

And while thinking thus, my feet slipped on the golden dust of the Himalayas.

My five husbands, whom I had regarded even as my five senses all through life and who had been my companions in life after life, did not even look back. They kept walking straight ahead on the path to svarg. I was alone at death’s door…!”