The Pandavas in Ekachakra

At a Glance

• Central figures: The five Pandava brothers - Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva - along with their mother Kunti, all disguised as Brahmins in exile; and Bakasura, the rakshasa who terrorized the town of Ekachakra.
• Setting: The town of Ekachakra, where the Pandavas took shelter with a Brahmin family during their exile after escaping the Lakshagriha; from the Mahabharata.
• The turn: When the Brahmin host family’s turn comes to provide the weekly tribute to Bakasura - a cartload of food and one human life - Kunti offers Bhima in their place.
• The outcome: Bhima travels to Bakasura’s lair, eats the demon’s tribute in front of him, fights and kills him, and frees Ekachakra from the weekly sacrifice it had endured for years.
• The legacy: Ekachakra returned to peace, the Brahmin family was spared, and the Pandavas - still keeping their identities secret - continued their exile as anonymous heroes.

The Pandavas had already burned once, or nearly so. At Varanavata, Duryodhana’s men had built them a house of lac - walls, floors, and furnishings all saturated with oil and wax - and waited for the right night. The five brothers and Kunti escaped through a tunnel dug in the dark, and walked out of Varanavata with nothing but their lives and the need to disappear. Disguised as wandering Brahmins, they moved from town to town, sleeping in strangers’ homes, eating whatever was offered, keeping their names to themselves. Duryodhana’s spies were still looking.

They came to Ekachakra exhausted and without prospects, and a Brahmin household took them in without question. For a while it was enough simply to rest.

The Tribute

The trouble with Ekachakra had been going on for years before the Pandavas arrived. Bakasura - a rakshasa of considerable size and appetite - had established himself in the forest outside town and arrived at a simple arrangement with the townspeople: each week, a cartload of food and one human being, delivered to the edge of the forest. If the cart arrived, he would stay in the forest. If it did not, he would come into town himself. The people of Ekachakra had been living by this arrangement long enough that it had taken on the grim regularity of a tax. Each family knew its turn was coming. Each family waited.

The week the Pandavas were staying with their Brahmin host, the turn came for that household. Kunti heard the family through the wall - the sounds of a grief too exhausted for screaming, the quieter and more terrible kind. The head of the household had decided he would go himself. His wife argued that she should go instead. His daughter said it should be her. Each of them was trying to be the one to die.

Kunti’s Offer

Kunti went to them in the morning and told them to send Bhima.

The Brahmin family resisted. These were wandering ascetics they had taken in out of charity - they could not in good conscience send a guest’s son to his death in their place. Kunti told them they did not understand what Bhima was. She said it plainly: he had the strength of a thousand elephants, he had faced worse than this, and he would not be killed by Bakasura. The family was not fully convinced, but they had no better option and the week was ending.

Bhima, for his part, had no objection.

What Bhima Did at the Forest’s Edge

He loaded the cart himself and drove it out to the place where the tribute was left. When he arrived, he did not wait for Bakasura. He sat down next to the cart and began to eat.

He ate methodically and with evident satisfaction - the rice, the sweets, the curd, whatever the family had loaded. When the rakshasa came crashing through the trees and found a single man calmly finishing his tribute, Bakasura’s rage was the kind that forgets strategy. He roared. Bhima looked up, finished what was in his hand, and stood.

The fight that followed shook the ground. Bakasura was enormous and had been killing men for years; he had no reason to expect difficulty. Bhima caught him by the throat and drove him into the earth. They wrestled through the underbrush, snapping trees, churning up the soil. Bakasura was strong. Bhima was stronger. In the end, Bhima got his arms around the rakshasa, lifted him clear off the ground, and broke him.

He left the body at the road’s edge where the townspeople would find it, and walked back to the Brahmin’s house.

The Town After

Word moved through Ekachakra before Bhima had finished washing. A Brahmin, someone’s guest, had gone to the forest and come back; Bakasura had not. The townspeople went to look and found the body at the treeline, massive and still, and the empty cart nearby with the wheel-ruts still fresh in the mud.

They celebrated, which was understandable. They tried to find the man who had done it, which was less convenient. The Pandavas gave nothing away - no names, no lineage, no explanation beyond the fiction of wandering ascetics who happened to be passing through. The Brahmin family said nothing either, out of gratitude or discretion or both. Ekachakra honored the unknown Brahmin, and peace returned to the town, and the five brothers and their mother quietly prepared to move on.

The exile had years left in it still, and Duryodhana’s men were still looking, and Bhima’s hands were still strong. For now, that was enough.