The tenth day of the battle of Kurukshetra. Darkness has long since fallen. On the battlefield, there are two warriors still, next to each other. One is a Pandav, the first one; the other is a Kaurav, the last one. They are silent, each fighting himself, both painfully aware it is a losing battle.

“Stop this war,” Bheeshma puts all his might into the words. They come out as a croak. He is as comfortable as a man impaled on a hundred arrows can expect to be. But every now and then, a pain much more discomforting sears through him and makes the arrows seem like bliss.

Dashrath held the grape against the light filtering in through the playhouse curtains. It looked almost transparent. After making sure he had the undivided attention of baby Rama sitting on his left thigh, Dashrath moved it to the young prince’s mouth.

Rama opened his mouth wide. Dashrath quickly put the grape in his own mouth and chewed into it with an overdone show of relish. Rama gurgled with laughter.

The king took another grape and did the same, teasing Rama to the last moment and then throwing the grape into his own mouth. Rama laughed again and opened his mouth wide.

It was one of the quieter afternoons. I realised there were more squirrels around than usual. Then I realised they were all looking at me. What I didn’t realise was that there was an even larger number of them on the neighbouring trees. Every one of them was looking at me.

Most of them were not even from any place nearby. I knew pretty much all of the squirrels near my house. They usually sat on ledges and waited for biscuit crumbs. And there were only two of them, a couple by the looks of it.

The squirrel was old. He was older than most squirrels he knew, a fact that didn’t rest easy on his heart. On the brighter side, the gods had blessed him with the monkey’s friendship. The monkey prepared crushed walnuts for him. Things worked out nicely.

The squirrel had parts of the day it looked forward to. When the birds returned at sunset from their day’s foraging, they told him of all the things they had seen as they flew over Himavat and beyond. One of the younger birds came to him every day and stayed for hours, chirping away without a pause about what her day was like. When she tired, the squirrel told her many stories from back when he had been young and had roamed the land. She listened with patience (she preferred talking to listening) until her mother sang to her from above that it was time to nest for the night.