Victory City

Throughout Victory City, Pampa tells the story of many kings. Few feature as prominently as Krishna, however, and few veer so wildly between glory and shame. Krishna is emblematic of the novel and of Bisnaga as a whole, as he is caught between opposing forces. Krishna is a Hindu ruler who dresses in a Muslim fashion, representing his position between Vidyasagar’s Hindu fundamentalism and Pampa’s religious pluralism. He is caught between two wives, Tirumala and Zerelda, who vie with one another for his affection, for their status, and for their right to put their child on his throne. Importantly, Krishna is caught between the past and the future. He trusts Pampa’s magical powers when they make him strong, praising her for her time as Queen Regent, in which she turned his empire into a bastion of progressive egalitarianism. When a drought comes, however, he becomes captured by reactionary ideas and is so keen to undo Pampa’s progressivism that he sentences her to be blinded for a supposed plot against his son. Krishna never truly believes in anything other than his own importance, making him the perfect embodiment of a patriarchal view of power as an end in itself rather than a means to build a better world.

Krishna’s self-importance is his only enduring characteristic. With his ideology subject to the whims of the moment, the only constant is his arrogance. He does whatever comforts his ego, as he refuses to accept that he may have made any kind of mistake. He begins to believe that he is the reincarnation of the god who bears his name. The irony of this belief is that he meets a woman who is actually imbued with the powers of a goddess. Krishna watches Pampa perform great miracles, such as raising up seven walls around his city through magic. In the moment, he praises her power. Later, however, he sentences her to be blinded because she is a threat to his own power. Whereas he has never performed anything like the miracles that Pampa performs, he needs to believe that he is her equal. Pampa presents Krishna with a problem: She is demonstrably in possession of godlike powers, whereas he is not. He desires to be seen as a god, whereas Pampa simply wishes to be credited as an equal. Pampa does not need to loudly declare her relationship with a goddess, as she can let her actions speak on her behalf. Through her existence, Pampa undermines Krishna’s ego, which is why he is so quick to turn on her when he loses his grip on power. After years of likening himself to a god, he feels the need to exert his authority over someone whom he knows to be in possession of godlike powers. In doing so, he shows himself to be as insecure as any human. When he comes to beg Pampa for forgiveness, she forgives him without absolving him of his guilt. The knowledge that he will never have her power, she knows, is punishment enough for the man who desperately wants the world to see him as a god.

To this extent, Krishna cannot comprehend his own downfall. When he is successful, he credits himself, rather than the people like Pampa and Timmarasu who work on his behalf. When it is failing, he runs out of people to blame. Eventually, his grip on power becomes so weak that he turns to his foolish brother as his successor, rather than his own daughter. This final betrayal of Pampa’s struggle for equal rights is what damns Krishna the most. Far removed from the godlike status he hoped to achieve, he shows himself to be a pathetic relic of an ugly past. In the end, Krishna is not different from the other men who have used Pampa for their own ends. The man who wanted to be a god shows himself to be petty, human, and remarkably weak.

Pampa gives birth to three daughters, but none of the three have as big an impact on her life as Zerelda Li. Importantly, Zerelda Li is the last of Pampa’s family line. After a long sleep, Zerelda Li awakens Pampa with an act of love and reveals to her that she is “the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of Zerelda Sangama and Grandmaster Li Ye-He” (190), a product of the family venturing out beyond Bisnaga. Since Pampa’s existence is defined so much through her relationship with the city, Zerelda Li’s appearance illustrates the hold that Bisnaga has over the family. Even many generations later, she feels drawn to Pampa and drawn to Bisnaga. She has been out into the world, as the original Zerelda hoped, and she has returned home. The world outside Bisnaga was not a paradise, nor was Zerelda Li content with the feeling of dislocation that came from her multiethnic heritage. She felt as though she never truly belonged to any place, nor was she satisfied with the constant relocation of her life at sea. Bisnaga is her family’s home, so she returns to the city and to Pampa with a sense of being drawn by fate. The original Zerelda was defined by her departure from Bisnaga and from Pampa, while Zerelda Li is defined by her return.

Through her return, Zerelda Li provides Pampa with the opportunity to repay the mistakes she made in raising her own daughters. Yotshna, Zerelda, and Yuktasri were Pampa’s first children. Though she helped them to escape with her into the enchanted forest, she never escapes the guilt she feels for her failure toward her daughters. She either drove them away or drove them into grief, then fell into an enforced slumber for so long that she was unable to undo any of her mistakes. Through her existence as the last of the family line, Zerelda is so much more important to Pampa than she might have expected. By helping Zerelda (and later Tirumalamba), Pampa seeks to atone for her mistakes. Even when she disagrees with Zerelda, such as in the matters of the succession to the throne, Pampa acknowledges the debt she has to her family. Zerelda does not just reawaken Pampa in a physical sense; she also reawakens the regrets that have accumulated throughout Pampa’s long life. In particular, since Zerelda is the only living family member, Pampa feels a debt to help her as a way to atone for mistakes made many years before Zerelda Li was born. In this sense, Zerelda Li represents the city itself, burdened by mistakes and promises that were made centuries before her own existence.

As she settles into life in Bisnaga, Zerelda Li becomes a secondary queen. Though she is not allowed to ascend to the same status as her rival, Tirumala, she is demonstrably the king’s favored wife. This secondary status, however, leads to threats on her life and a great deal of stress, some of which may contribute to her untimely death. In this sense, Zerelda Li shares with Pampa the misfortune of having a life impacted by circumstances and biases. She and Krishna were in love, but politics meant that Tirumala ranked higher than her. She may have produced a daughter, but politics again intervened to suggest that Tirumala’s son would have been chosen ahead of her to ascend to the throne. Tragically, Zerelda Li dies in childbirth, and her child is stillborn. She is denied the opportunity to be with the man she loves and she is denied the potential of furthering her family line. As much as Pampa has tried to change the patriarchal culture in Bisnaga, Zerelda Li falls victim to the reactionary forces that linger in the society. Her death has a terrible impact on Pampa, representing not just her failure to protect Zerelda Li as an individual, but her failure to protect her family and the other women of Bisnaga. Through her life and her death, Zerelda Li reminds Pampa of the limitations of her power and influence.