Story Week 5

Satyavati with her father. Photo credits: Wikipedia

 There once was a girl names Satyavati, she was born with three hands. Her right side had two hands, while the left hand one as normal. After a week of being born, her mother was given new that the doctors could not fix her child’s hands. Her mother cried, and felt bad for her baby. Since her mother couldn’t bare having a child that wasn’t normal she put her up for adoption. The girl had difficultly finding a family to adopt her. Years went by, and no one wanted to give her a home. After about fifteen years, a young couple found interest in her. They thought she could complete their family, since the wife could not bare children. They wanted to adopt her immediately. She was super excited and couldn’t wait to leave the adoption center. Once home, the couple and the girl grew very fond of each other. The father in particular became very protective of his daughter. He was defensive over his daughter because she had once been married and had a child named Vyasa. When it came time for college, he left the small town and went away to university thousands of miles away. Satyavati missed her son, but since he was gone for a purpose she didn’t want to bother him. She loved living at home with her parents, but she could help but feeling that she wanted her own marriage again, and wanted to build her own family. Her father told her she was a special girl, and that she deserved to be loved unconditionally. As time progressed all the women in town were becoming engaged to the young bachelors. However, no one came to ask for her hand in marriage. Her father told her that the right man would come and she just needed to be patient. One day, a man named Shantanu was moving in to town. He was at the hardware store picking up a few items for his new house. Satyavati was in the same store looking for a few things her father needed. When Shantanu saw Satyavati, he instantly fell in love, and didn’t even notice she had three hands. He went up to her and ask her where she was from. She told him she had been living in the small town all her life; she then asked him where he was from. He told her he was from an even small town an hour away, but was moving here for work. After their brief conversation, Satyavati left the store thinking nothing of the conversation she just had with Shantanu. This was not the case for him. He instantly knew he wanted to make the young lady he had just met his partner for life. Eventually he saw her again and asked her to dinner. Her father was happy she had found someone and told her if the relationship went to another dinner, he would like to meet him. Eventually they lasted in a relationship for three years, and he wanted to propose to her. Shantanu didn’t care she had a child with another man, to him she was still pure.  Her father asked him if he could offer his daughter an unbreakable marriage, and provide enough money to last her son through college. The man told him that he would never leave Satyavati, and would work towards paying for her sons college. This however was not enough for Satyavati’s father and denied Shantanu’s proposal.

Author’s Notes

I kept to the original story of how Satyavati was born with a defect. Instead of having a smell to her, in this story she had a third hand. Her father just as in the story was very protective of her. She also had a child names Vyasa, but instead of going off to holy meditation, her son went off away to college. Shantanu, just like the original tale, falls in love with her and wants to marry her. Her father in the story asks him if he could make her son a heir since her was the king, but since he couldn’t not fulfill this promise, he left heart broken. In this story however, Shantanu is not a king but just a normal man, and in this story he would not be able to pay for her son’s college right away so the father of Satyavati said no to the marriage.

Biliography:
PDE Mahabharata
King Shantanu and Satyavati