Arjuna’s wanderings brought him to the shores of the western ocean. Kṛṣṇa found him at Prabhāsa. They embraced and sat down in the forest. As yet they had never spoken alone together. First Kṛṣṇa asked: “Why are you visiting all the holy places?” And Arjuna told him. They might have been friends swapping stories after a long separation. But Arjuna realized, and wanted to take his time over the realization, that Kṛṣṇa was the eye that watched his eye, the mind at the bottom of his own mind, that already knew everything Arjuna was seeking to know. With this companion, whether visible or invisible, his whole life changed. It wouldn’t be enough now to be a warrior who excelled with his bow. Nor to fight for dharma, the Law. Before doing that, his mind must open out wide toward those two focal points. A sense of calm, unlike anything he had felt before, spread through Arjuna: now he knew that, whatever he did, Kṛṣṇa would never do anything against him, even if he were to oppose — and how often that was to happen — his thinking, his gaze, his words. And now those words seemed more and more spaced out, as if in the intervals between them Arjuna were being absorbed into the other watching him in the silence. Kṛṣṇa broke into his reflections: “Let’s go up to Mount Raivataka. There’s a big festival on, with actors and dancers.”
The mountain was lit up by torches like a huge hall. The young Vṛṣṇis were milling around, showing off garlands and bracelets. Arjuna wandered among them, cheerful and intrigued, Kṛṣṇa behind him. Suddenly he saw Subhadrā and stopped stock-still in the throng. She was beauty incarnate. But something else too: she was a propitious creature. Time opened up before her. Behind him Arjuna heard Kṛṣṇa’s quiet, suggestive voice ask: “Why on earth is a powerful ascetic like yourself, someone accustomed to the forest, suddenly getting mixed up in love? That is Subhadrā, my sister.”
Now everything happened very quickly. Arjuna said: “When I look at her, the earth smiles at me.” Kṛṣṇa had already assumed an absorbed, pensive expression, as when he used to speak of the art of government. He said: “For a kṣatriya, the rules recommend a svayaṃvara. But one can never be quite sure which suitor will win. Someone else might be preferred to yourself. However, a kṣatriya may resort to abduction. That is also allowed. Carry off the beautiful Subhadrā. That’s my advice. I’ll look after everything else.”
At the end of twelve months, Arjuna went back to his brothers and Draupadī. He had Subhadrā beside him, dazzling in a red silk robe. Draupadī looked at Arjuna and said: “When you undo a bundle, it’s the oldest knot that comes loose first.” Arjuna tried to object, as though duty bound to do so. Proud and tough, Draupadī seemed not to hear.
Some time later, Arjuna went to Draupadī again with Subhadrā. He had got her to dress as a gopī. If possible, she was even more beautiful. She refracted a distant happiness: that of her brother Kṛṣṇa’s infancy. This time it was Subhadrā who spoke to Draupadī. She said: “I am Subhadrā, your servant.” Draupadī smiled at her: “May your husband at least be without rivals…” In an earnest voice, Subhadrā answered: “So be it…” From then on the women quarreled no more. A few months later Subhadrā gave birth to Abhimanyu.
Nothing ever generated so much curiosity in Indra’s heaven as the imminent arrival of Arjuna. “His son! His son! His favorite!” was the general murmur. Meanwhile Arjuna looked around, among the peaks, moraines, and dark blue valleys of the Himālaya, where he had discovered terror and absolute solitude. Now he greeted the mountains, at once grateful and moved. “I have been happy among you…,” he said. “It was here I discovered tapas and practiced it until the forests began to steam. Here I sat motionless for months, eating the wind. Here countless ephemeral creatures passed before my eyes, creatures with no karman, obedient only to the one imperative: “Live! Die!” Here I fought a wild hunter who reduced me to a bloody lump of sacrificial meat before giving me the weapon that surpasses all others, the severed head of Brahmā, a weapon that can be wielded with a thought, with a glance of the eyes, with a word or with a bow.” He went on with a meticulous list of his solitary adventures. Heaven didn’t seem to hold much attraction for him.
It was then that Mātali, the charioteer, burst out of the clouds unfurling the deep blue Vaijayanta standard above a chariot waving with snakes. “Your father is calling you,” he said. “He wants all the Celestials to welcome you…” As the chariot rose with him on board, Arjuna saw thousands of other chariots wandering in the air. They shone brightly, so that already the sun and the moon seemed superfluous. Mātali acted as his guide, pointing them out to him, telling him the names of those they belonged to. For the most part they were sages of olden times, whose names Arjuna barely knew. He realized the chariot was getting close to the divine residence when a vast, white, four-tusked elephant appeared. “It must be Airāvata…,” thought Arjuna, and suddenly there before him was Amarāvatī, city of Indra. A noisy, colorful crowd had gathered to greet him. It wasn’t so much the gods, whom he gradually began to recognize, that struck him as the multitudes of Gandharvas and Apsaras. Airy, vibrant, and fickle, more beautiful than the gods perhaps, these beings seemed to him the natives of the sky. Then he saw his father, under a tall, white umbrella, screened by a fan that gave off perfume. The Gandharvas’ hymns rose and fell frenetically, while the Apsaras swayed slowly on their hips. No one had ever seen so much tenderness in Indra’s eyes. He went to Arjuna, took him by the hand, stroked his cheeks and long arms. Then as, cautiously, almost incredulously, the king of the gods moved a hand toward Arjuna’s chest, at the same time breathing in the smell of his head, his open palm could be seen to bear the scars left by thunderbolts. Indra led his son toward the throne and sat down beside him. For Arjuna this was perhaps the first moment of unthreatened beatitude in his life. Nothing was asked of him. The weight of duty was lifted. The sky was a spectacle decked out for this occasion.
He watched the Gandharvas busying themselves with basins full of water to wash his feet and refresh him after his long trip. Arjuna’s eyes took in the seething circle of the Apsaras. In a low voice he asked Mātali, who had stayed close beside him, what their names were. Mātali listed them: “Ghṛtācī, Menakā, Rambhā, Pūrvacitti, Svayaṃprabhā, Urvaśī, Miśrakeśī, Ḍuṇḍu, Gaurī, Varūthinī, Sahā, Madhurasvarā…” And he went on. Arjuna couldn’t follow. Some of the names evoked stories he had heard as a child, of princesses, ṛṣis, warriors, hunters. But these heroines seemed to have returned to their places in a chorus of dancers, as if together they made up just one single story, one single face, happy to merely refract and sparkle. “I must learn how to recognize them…,” thought Arjuna. And his eyes went on running tirelessly across those faces, those bodies. In their exultation, their splendor, the eyes he met had something vacuous and jaded about them, as though they were no more than inset stones. Even the swelling breasts held high in pearl bodices, even the soft thighs seemed painted. Until Arjuna’s eyes were compelled to settle on those of one Apsaras among many. “High cheekbones, like mine,” he thought. And he realized his gaze was sinking into eyes as remote and unruffled as the surface of a lake. “Who is that Apsaras with the high cheekbones?” he asked Mātali. “It’s Urvaśī,” said the charioteer.