Nobody in the town of Ekachakra had been asked whether they wanted to feed a monster. They simply did it, every week, because the alternative was worse.
Into this town, after escaping the burning house of lac, walked five young men and their mother, dressed as wandering Brahmins. The Pandavas had spent months hiding in the forest, and now they lodged quietly in the house of a poor Brahmin family, begging alms by day and eating what they were given. It was the calmest stretch of their exile. It did not last.
The Tax Paid in Human Lives
Just outside Ekachakra lived a rakshasa named Baka, immensely strong and endlessly hungry. He had made a bargain with the townspeople, or rather he had imposed one. He would not terrorise the town at random, so long as every week a household sent him a cartload of cooked rice, two buffaloes, and the man who drove the cart. Baka ate the rice, ate the buffaloes, and then ate the driver.
The weeks rotated through the families. Now it was the turn of the Brahmin who sheltered the Pandavas.
Kunti, in the next room, heard weeping. When she went to see, she found the family arguing over which of them would die. The Brahmin said it should be him, since he could not bear to see anyone else go. His wife said no, a husband must not be lost while his wife lives. Their grown daughter said she should be the one, since a daughter is raised to leave the house anyway. And finally the small boy, barely old enough to speak, picked up a blade of grass and lisped that he would kill the rakshasa with it.
Kunti was moved to tears. She had been given shelter by these people, and she knew what she owed them.
The Offer Kunti Made
She told the Brahmin not to worry. One of her five sons would take the cart. When the Brahmin refused, horrified at the idea of sacrificing a guest, she explained calmly that her son Bhima was strong beyond ordinary measure, and that he had already killed demons before. Then she went to Bhima and asked him.
Bhima, the story says, was delighted. The others were not. Yudhishthira was furious when he found out, asking how she could risk one of the very sons who held the family together, and for strangers at that. Kunti answered with a mother’s logic: they owed a debt, and a good deed done in the open would in time be repaid.
The Cart That Never Arrived
Bhima loaded the cart with rice and set off toward Baka’s forest. And here the epic gets wonderfully petty. He was hungry. As he drove, the smell of the food reached him, and Bhima, the wolf-bellied, began to eat it himself.
By the time he reached the forest, Baka was waiting, furious and starving. Bhima was sitting on the cart, still eating, and calling out Baka’s name to tell him the food was excellent. When Baka charged, Bhima did not even turn around. He finished the meal with one hand while the demon pounded on his back.
Only then did he stand up. The fight tore trees out of the ground. Eventually Bhima pinned Baka down, bent him backward over his knee, and broke his spine. He dragged the body to the town gate and left it there.
What Ekachakra Found in the Morning
The townspeople came out and found their tormentor dead. They asked who had done it. The Brahmin, remembering a promise, would only say that a great Brahmin with powerful mantras had done it. The Pandavas slipped away from the celebration, still unrecognised.
It is a story about a mother’s sense of obligation, a boy’s grass-blade courage, and the strange comedy of the strongest man in the world stopping for a snack before a fight. It is also the one moment in the epic when the Pandavas hold a whole town’s fate in their hands and choose to remain anonymous.