| Was it a curse or a blessing?
The Roots of War
 Every curse has a blessing and almost every blessing has a curse in it. A blessing has the tendency to take the shape of a curse, if not put to proper and effective use. Here is a curse that brought happiness, and blessed the person with what he was dying for, made him the happiest man on earth, before taking him in its grip.
Dasaratha remained childless for a long time. This was the reason for his marrying Kaikeyi as his third wife, accepting the condition that he would make the child born to her, the king of Ayodhya. But even this marriage did not bring about the desired result. The circumstances changed so much later that even Kaikeyi did not use this condition of her father while claiming the two boons granted to her by Dasaratha, to make Bharata the king.
Dasaratha was highly skilled in archery and could hit the target even in pitch darkness, judging the direction and location of the target by sounds like footfall or such other noises. He once went to the forests to hunt lions and elephants. He selected a tree by the banks of River Sarayu and was waiting for elephants that frequented the river to drink water. The night was inky when he heard the gurgling sound of water gushing into something hollow. The noise was loud and clear in the silence of the night. Dasaratha assumed that an elephant had come to the river and was sipping water through its trunk. Though he could not see the animal, he let his arrow loose in the direction from which the noise emanated.
The arrow hit the target and the cry of a human in pain rent the air, shaking the poor king out of his senses. Dasaratha was shocked and ran to the spot only to find that it was Surochana, the son of ageing sage Chalabochana, who had come to the river to fetch water for his parents, and it was the sound of water filling the pitcher that he heard. Surochana was rolling about in pain, bleeding and was convulsing in death throes. ‘Pull this arrow out from me and relieve me of this pain,’ he pleaded. Dasaratha knew that that would relive his pain; but would bring about his death instantly, since that would drain all his blood through the incision caused by the arrow.
‘Please take this water to my parents,’ Surochana pleaded. ‘They are aged and cannot move about and are thirsty. Wait till they drink this water and disclose the news of my death only after they finish drinking.’
 Dasaratha’s heart turned heavy with pity and guilt. He took the water to Chalabochana, waited till the ageing parents appeased their thirst and then broke the news, begging to be condoned for what he did out of ignorance. The parents, who were aged and infirm and depended on their loyal and dutiful son for everything, were naturally grief-stricken.
‘Putra-soha,’ the agony of losing one’s child is the worst of all agonies that men undergo. No other loss strikes a person as the loss of his or her own child. I therefore curse you, O Dasaratha, that your death will be in such a dreadful and fateful circumstance. You will suffer the pangs of separation from your child and will die of it, like we do today!’
‘Though I was overwhelmed by grief at the pain that I had caused unknowingly, I was also overjoyed,’ says Dasaratha. ‘If the curse of the sage is to come true, I would be blessed with a child first. If I have to die undergo the pangs of separation from my child, I would beget a child in the first instance. That relieved me of the great pain that I was suffering for a long time.’
Hari Krishnan
harikrishnan@vsnl.net
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