One day as he was resting his head on my growing middle and munching red berries the inevitable happened. I had forgotten to de-pip one berry. The pip lodged in a cavity in his teeth. He tried to dislodge it with his tongue. He failed. He tried to poke it out with a twig; he failed. With his remaining powers he roared out a mantra. The pip shot out of his mouth. “Menaka,” Vish cursed, “ you are like this berry. Sweet and luscious on the outside but stony inside. I realize Lord Indra sent you to snare me! I reject you through all Time, Space, and Meaning. I return to my austerities. “ He turned to the pip. “ O little pip, you have led me back into awareness. For this flourish!” Immediately a great tree grew between us.
“ Vish,“ I shouted, “think of your innocent child! Wait for her birth! Don’t you desert her!“ But Sage Vishwamitra was storming into the forest without a backward glance.
A famous painting by Raja Ravi Varma ‘ illustrates ‘ this momentous event. It shows Vish as tall and handsome turning his face away from me, who, contrite in white garments is offering my little Sakuntala to him for acceptance. I contest this. Vish was never any woman’s dream and he abandoned me before I gave birth. The painter even got the colour of my garments wrong: These were sapphire with sadness, ruby with rage, amethyst with anxiety for my child. But this is the way my story is told. I’ve been misrepresented all through time, and that too in the arts that I so love.