The royal kitchens of Matsya were a world of steam, fire, and the clamor of clanging metal. It was a place of honest, sweaty work, a stark contrast to the perfumed, whispering corridors of the court. It was here, amidst the smoke and the chaos, that Draupadi sought her final refuge, her last hope for justice. She walked into the kitchens, her unbound hair a dark river of sorrow, her eyes blazing with a fire that seemed to cut through the smoky haze.
Bhima, as the cook Ballava, was in the middle of his duties, his massive hands, which could tear a tree from its roots, now expertly kneading a mountain of dough. He saw her enter, and his heart stopped. He saw the red mark on her cheek where Kichaka's foot had struck, the tremor of controlled fury in her hands, and the profound, soul-deep humiliation in her eyes. The sounds of the kitchen faded away. The world shrank to the space between them.
She did not speak at first. She simply stood before him, her silence a more powerful accusation than any scream. Bhima's hands fell from the dough. He felt a rage so pure, so absolute, it threatened to split his very skull. He had seen this look in her eyes once before, in the Sabha of Sorrows, and his helplessness then had been a poison in his soul for twelve long years.
"What is it, Panchali?" he finally managed to say, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that made the nearby kitchen helpers flinch and step away.
"What is it, my lord?" she repeated, and now her voice came, not as a plea, but as a torrent of bitter, scalding irony. "It is nothing. It is merely the Dharma of my great husband, the Emperor Yudhishthira, being upheld. It is the sight of his wife being kicked like a stray dog in an open court while he sits and watches, his honor intact. It is the sight of his mighty brothers, the conquerors of the world, standing silent while their empress is humiliated, their vows to their elder brother more sacred than her dignity."
Every word was a carefully aimed dart, designed to bypass the chains of his vow and strike directly at his warrior's heart, at his husband's pride.
"Where were you, Bhima?" she cried, her voice breaking with a raw, terrible anguish. "You, my husband, who swore to protect me! You, the mighty Vrikodara, who crushed Hidimba and Bakasura! You stood and watched! You saw his foot on my body! You saw the leer in his eyes! And you did nothing! What has become of your strength? What has become of your mace? Has this cook's apron and the smoke of this kitchen made you forget that you are a Kshatriya? That you are my husband?"
She fell to her knees, her proud composure finally shattering. She clutched his feet, her tears, hot and bitter, soaking the dusty floor. "I cannot bear it anymore, Bhima," she sobbed. "I cannot live like this. The leering eyes of Kichaka follow me everywhere. The queen, his sister, protects him. The king is a coward. And my own husbands are bound by a vow that has rendered them impotent. If you do not act, if you do not deliver the justice that this pathetic court has denied me, then I swear by the sacred fire from which I was born, I will take my own life this very night. I would rather die than suffer this dishonor for another day."
Her words, her tears, her utter despair—it was the catalyst that finally broke the dam of Bhima's restraint. He let out a roar of pure, animalistic grief and rage. He reached down and lifted her to her feet as if she were a child, his massive hands gentle on her trembling shoulders. He looked into her tear-streaked face, and the sight of her pain extinguished the last vestiges of his patience, his reason, his vow to his brother.
"No," he growled, his voice shaking with a terrible, murderous calm. "You will not die, Panchali. He will. Tonight. The debt of your tears will be paid in his blood. Tell me what to do. The time for hiding is over. The time for justice has come."
Draupadi's tears stopped. A cold, hard, and brilliant light entered her eyes. She had found her champion. She had found the one force in the universe that could answer her pain. But she knew that a blind act of rage would expose them all. They had to be cunning. The serpent had to be lured from its hole.
"Listen to me, my lord," she whispered, her voice now a conspiratorial hiss. "We cannot kill him openly. It would reveal us, and our thirteen years of suffering would be for nothing. His death must appear to be the work of my 'Gandharva husbands.' It must be supernatural, a vengeance delivered by unseen hands."
A plan, born of her desperation and his rage, began to form between them. "I will go to him," she said, her voice hardening with resolve. "I will pretend to have been won over by his power. I will tell him that I am weary of my invisible husbands and that I desire a real man, a man of flesh and blood like him. I will consent to be his."
Bhima's hands clenched, but he saw the terrible necessity of the ruse and remained silent.
"But I will tell him that I am afraid," she continued. "I will say that we cannot meet in his chambers, for my Gandharva husbands have spies everywhere. I will suggest a secret tryst. A place where no one will see us. The royal dance hall. It is always empty and dark at night. I will tell him to come there alone, after midnight, and I will be waiting for him."
Bhima's eyes lit up with a savage understanding. The dance hall. A perfect, dark, and silent stage for the final act.
"And you, my lord," Draupadi concluded, her eyes locking with his, "you will be there before him. You will be waiting in the darkness. You will be the 'Gandharva' who has come to claim his due."
The plan was set. It was a terrible, desperate gamble, but it was their only path.
That evening, Draupadi, her heart a cold stone in her chest, sought out Kichaka. She found him in the palace gardens, still flushed with his victory, still arrogant in his power. She approached him not with defiance, but with a feigned, trembling submission.
"My lord Kichaka," she began, her eyes downcast. "I have been foolish. Your power… your magnificence… it has overwhelmed me. I was afraid, but now I see the truth. A woman like me deserves a protector like you, not a host of invisible spirits."
Kichaka stared, his lust re-ignited by her apparent surrender. A triumphant, leering smile spread across his face. "So, the proud Sairandhri has come to her senses," he sneered. "I knew you would. Come to my chambers now."
"No, my lord, not here!" she pleaded, feigning terror. "My Gandharva husbands are always watching! They will kill us both! But I have thought of a place. A secret place. The royal dance hall. It is always deserted after dark. Meet me there, alone, after the palace is asleep. No one will ever know. There, I will be yours completely."
Kichaka, his ego and his lust blinding him to any possibility of a trap, readily agreed. The thought of a secret, forbidden tryst only inflamed his desire. He spent the rest of the evening drinking heavily, preening himself, and boasting to his sycophants of the conquest he was about to make.
As midnight approached, the palace of Virata fell into a deep slumber. The corridors were dark and silent. Bhima, his massive form a moving shadow, made his way to the dance hall. He entered the vast, empty space, the air thick with the scent of sandalwood and old flowers. He did not light a lamp. He stood in the center of the room, a pillar of silent, waiting death.
A short time later, he heard footsteps. Kichaka, his steps unsteady from wine, his mind clouded with lust, stumbled into the dark hall. "Malini?" he whispered into the blackness. "My beautiful one, where are you? Do not be shy. Your master has come for you."
He reached out, his hands groping in the dark. He touched a form. It was tall, and it was hard as stone. "Ah, you are strong," he chuckled, thinking it was her. "I like a woman with spirit."
He tried to pull the form into an embrace. And in that moment, the form embraced him back.
The arms that wrapped around Kichaka were not the soft, yielding arms of a woman. They were bands of iron, imbued with the strength of ten thousand elephants. The breath that he felt on his neck was not a lover's sigh, but the hot, ragged breath of a predator.
"Your Gandharva husband has come for you, Kichaka," Bhima's voice rumbled in the darkness, a sound that was no longer human.
A scream of pure, primal terror died in Kichaka's throat. He struggled, he fought, but he was like a child in the grip of a giant. The battle was short, brutal, and almost completely silent. There was no room for technique, no space for a duel. It was an execution.
Bhima did not just kill him. He annihilated him. Remembering the kick, remembering the leer, remembering the years of his wife's suffering, he unleashed the full, terrible force of his suppressed rage. He broke every bone in Kichaka's body. He twisted his limbs into unnatural angles. He crushed his head, his chest, his pelvis, until the commander-in-chief of the Matsya army was no longer recognizable as a human being. He kneaded the body, as he had kneaded the dough in the kitchen, until it was a single, grotesque, boneless ball of flesh and gore. He left no mark of a weapon, no sign of a human hand. He left only a horror, a testament to a power that was clearly not of this world.
His terrible task complete, he slipped away from the dance hall and returned to the kitchens, washing the blood from his hands, his face a grim, satisfied mask.
Draupadi, who had been waiting in a nearby corridor, her heart pounding, then entered the hall. She lit a single lamp. The light fell upon the gruesome, shapeless mass on the floor. She did not flinch. She looked upon the remains of her tormentor, and a cold, hard sense of justice settled in her soul.
She then ran from the hall, her voice raised in a piercing scream of feigned terror. "Help! Help me! The Gandharvas! They have come! They have killed him!"
The palace guards came running, their torches casting flickering shadows on the walls. They entered the dance hall and stopped dead, their faces turning pale with horror at the sight. They saw the beautiful Sairandhri weeping, and they saw the unrecognizable lump of flesh that had once been their invincible commander.
The news spread through the palace like a plague. King Virata was summoned. He looked at the gruesome remains of his powerful brother-in-law and trembled with a superstitious fear. The Sairandhri's story was true. Her invisible, celestial husbands were real, and their vengeance was terrible beyond comprehension.
The court of Virata was now a place of terror. The men who had once looked upon Draupadi with lust now averted their eyes, their desire replaced by a mortal fear. She was no longer just a beautiful servant; she was the protected consort of terrible, unseen powers.
The secret was safe. Justice had been served. But the act had sent a tremor through the fragile peace of their thirteenth year. They had proven that even in their weakest state, they were a force to be reckoned with. But they had also created a power vacuum in the kingdom of Matsya, an absence of strength that their enemies, ever watchful, would be very quick to notice and to exploit.