There are many stories about Urvashi, the divinely beautiful apsara from Indra’s court. The saddest one is about her love for Pururavas where, like all celestial women, she has to leave her mortal beloved after bearing him a child.
But the story that is much more layered is the one from the Mahabharata, in which Urvashi meets Arjuna, the Pandava, in heaven. Arjuna has been whisked off by his father, Indra, to enjoy the many delights that celestial realms have to offer, among them, song and dance and gorgeous women. Indra notices that his son cannot take his eyes off Urvashi and so, Indra suggests to her that she get to know the handsome young warrior better.
Urvashi approaches Arjuna, offering him all the pleasures that apsaras are known for, including and especially her body. But Arjuna rejects her, claiming that he is descended from Pururavas and as such, he thinks of her as a mother in much the same way that he thinks of Kunti.
Urvashi is outraged — she has never been rejected before. For his unmanly conduct, Urvashi curses Arjuna to become a eunuch. Indra is horrified and quickly modifies the curse to last only for a year. Arjuna’s emasculation is further ameliorated by the fact that he does not become a eunuch, he merely disguises himself as one in the last year of the Pandavas’ exile when he teaches dance to the King of Virata’s daughter.
Urvashi’s story of a woman, who asks a man to sleep with her and is scorned by the object of desire is utterly different from the story of Surpanakha who does the same thing. In the Ramayana, Surpanakha declares that she is attracted to Rama, a man who is not her husband. This is something that rakshasa women are allowed to do (as are apsaras), but Surpanakha is horribly and violently mutilated as a consequence of her candour. She is punished for acting on the sexual desire that she feels.
We tend to compare the epics’ attitudes towards women through their major characters, their heroes and heroines. But even such vast and complex narratives tend to be surprisingly consistent in terms of their sub-texts. The Mahabharata seems to accept the reality of multiple sexual partners for men and women. For all that we focus on Draupadi’s five husbands, all the Pandava brothers have more than one wife. These multiple liaisons reach past the human world: note the gods who father the Pandavas, think of Ganga, Hidimba, Ulupi and even of Urvashi herself.
But let us not be too quick to applaud the acknowledgement of these transgressive relationships in the Mahabharata. Ultimately, they serve only one function — the birth of heroic sons who will either continue the royal dynasty or die for their fathers in battle. To that extent, the Ramayana is more honest in its conservative injunction to men and women, which is simply this: sexual desire, even the suspicion of it, outside the bounds of conjugality will be brutally punished.
The writer works with myth, epic and the story traditions of the sub-continent
