I hate that fat slob so much, thought Duryodhana, watching his cousin Bhima. He was hidden in the long grass that grew plentifully along the banks of the river. Next to him lay his inevitable shadow – his brother, Dushasana, his face eagerly mirroring his elder brother’s.
Bhima, the second son of Pandu, sat fishing near the river, a plate of laddoos next to him. For now, Bhima ignored the sweets and concentrated on holding the rod in place. Duryodhana’s eyes kept their vigil on Bhima while his mind wandered.
Advertisement
Duryodhana was the eldest of a hundred sons and a daughter of Dhritarashtra and Gandhari and the crown prince of Hastinapura. He and his brothers had had the run of the place. He was the boy everyone stepped around. The boy with the mercurial temper and the vicious nature. The boy who would throw his weight around because he could. There was no one to challenge him. He was deferred to and feted by all and sundry. But all that had changed when he had suddenly to vie for attention along with his five cousins, the sons of Pandu, whom Kunti had brought to the palace after their father’s death.
He had disliked the Pandava brothers on sight, recognising peerless rivals with an astuteness surprising in one so young. Yudhishthira’s smug goodness, Bhima’s hulking physique, Arjuna’s cockiness and the two weaklings – as he classified them in his mind – Nakula and Sahadeva. There was something about them that grated on his nerves. Like they were the antithesis of everything that he and his brothers stood for.