Ramayana Read online

  Jatayu then tried attacking the lions

  so they would turn back

  but snakes from dark creeps

  in the chariot stabbed outwards

  repelling the shocked old vulture.

  Jatayu pleaded again and was ignored again.

  Only then did he dare attack Raavana with beak and claws –

  he cut into Raavana.

  Mortified, yet still Raavana would rather injure

  than kill this valorous bird

  so he feebled Jatayu with a punch.

  Jatayu flew back at Raavana

  but the latter finally saw red-mist!!!

  With a Chandrahasa, his precious sword,

  two smotes tattered Jatayu’s beautiful old wings.

  It’s said that every bird

  from as far here to the outer-midst

  for a spell fell silent

  when it was struck by Jatayu’s soaring

  pain note, by his crystal-cut pure cry-note

  that suffered disintegration

  soon as the Chandrahasa

  gaped his throat.

  Raavana’s amphibian car streaked the airy pathways –

  he felt bad

  witnessing the bravest all-time raja of birds

  and friend to all in all kingdoms

  dumped between banyans as so much trash.

  Book Fourth: You Hot Monkey!

  CHAPTER ONE: HOLE BLOCK BLEEDING BLUNDER

  CHAPTER TWO: THE LOVE PACT

  CHAPTER THREE: RAMA

  CHAPTER FOUR: MONSOON CAUSING UP TO NO GOOD

  CHAPTER FIVE: NOT SO BY THIRUVENGADAM

  CHAPTER SIX: IN BIRD BRAIN

  CHAPTER SEVEN.ONE: JAWMAN

  CHAPTER SEVEN.TWO: THE SEX THREAT

  CHAPTER SEVEN.THREE: THE DEATH THREAT

  CHAPTER SEVEN.FOUR: YOU SHOT-HOT MONKEY!

  CHAPTER EIGHT: EMERGENCY RAKSASSY JAW JAW

  CHAPTER NINE: MADU MADYA HONEY-POT HAIRDOWN DAY!

  CHAPTER TEN: CALLING ALL MONKEYS HERE NOW PLEASE!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: BY NALA TO LANKA

  Chapter One: Hole Block Bleeding Blunder

  Sugreeva, a monkey, recalls two buffaloes and then his own brother, Bali.

  ‘There was once a buffalo gang, their leader, Toraapa

  was a shocking white beast:

  one day he must have lost his mind, ho …

  Toraapa started horning to death all males in his tribe!

  He was soon butchering the whole male gang

  so he was the sole bull among his cow wives.

  One Toraapa wife was pregnant and thinking:

  What if I bloating a boy, Mmwwohh!?

  Toraapa will horn him.

  She fled for a cave

  and gave birth to a fulsome black buffalo she named Toraapi.

  She fed Toraapi her milk

  soured with tales

  about his father’s death spree.

  Toraapi hatched only hatred for his dad,

  he daily sharpened his horns and at night

  he came down yonder

  measuring his hooves against his father’s hooves.

  When Toraapi’s hooves were big as Toraapa’s hooves

  he came down the mountain. And what did he do?

  He first of all started gorging his sex appetite

  by bursting his pent bull-hood

  on his dad’s wives!

  Toraapi mated with each Toraapa cow

  even his own sweet mummy-ji!

  Powering across the land, massed with his polluted wives,

  the father, Toraapa, brimming in his whiteness

  called out monster-voiced,

  “What bull dare soil my wives, Mmwwohh!?”

  Leaking creams and red-eyed,

  Toraapi burst his spunky voice, “It was I, yourrrrr

  sson! These all are now become my wiiives!!!”

  The father, hopping with rage, burst dry earth.

  Then stamped his hooves and charged at the son

  but the son wiggled aside: hornswoggler! Dainty boy.

  Turning about, Toraapa charged at the boy again.

  Again, dainty boy.

  This tarupping charging

  back and hard and hard again

  till sundown ended

  when the dad getting dizzied.

  Only then Toraapi fighting fair –

  his rock-sharpened pike horns

  he horned into the dad guts!

  Toraapa was burst – flooding into his death.

  Toraapi then becomes big buffalo boss?

  No-no, said the gods

  sickened by Toraapi’s toppling of the father.

  They said he must fight his match, a monkey,

  known as Bali, to prove his right to be a ruler.

  So up stepped bad-black Toraapi

  to unsettle our monkey kingdom.

  Bali was ready, “Oho buffalo!

  Feel this right arm strength. This fist alone

  will crumble your lungs, ho!” “I am Toraapi!

  Mmmwwwohhhh!!!

  Feel my hoof spur!

  I burst a father who fought Sea and made it cry out

  as spray.

  Meet your Dead-God.”

  Bali, who was used to cracking off

  mountain peaks and tossing them about like nits,

  grappled with Toraapi.

  Toraapi dainty: Bali brisk. One was flung up:

  one flopped backwards. Reiterative deadlocking.

  Bali addressed Toraapi,

  “These fields are too loose for a full fight.

  Come to a cave-yard where you see my gusto, ho!”

  Toraapi must have feared that if Bali faced

  defeat he may escape by flying across the trees

  so he gladly followed through a hole

  to a cramped cave aside the ocean.

  Bali told me, “Hang about by this hole, youngster,

  so I can return this way once I’ve killed him, yo.”

  I kept my feet at the hole for many moons,

  then one dawn

  streaming across the watery surface:

  pale-red blood, the colour of monkey blood.

  Bali must be dead, I thought. God bless Bali.

  Our monkey advisers made me, as Bali’s younger bro,

  the king: King Sugreeva!

  As Bali was dead, my army blocked the hole

  with a mountain pushed over it to keep out Toraapi.

  BUT, Bali was not dead, ho! He’d finally killed Toraapi

  because Toraapi hadn’t seen the cave-space

  was too small

  for him to charge.

  Bali was all over the hulking buffalo

  and killed him by cracking off a Toraapi horn

  then piercing him in the guts with it.

  So why, you must be thinking, was Toraapi’s

  blood pale-red as monkey blood?

  At Toraapi’s death, the gods had showered Bali

  with flowers:

  pollen and petals must have mixed-in with Toraapi’s blood

  to make it pale-red as it spread in the ocean.

  Bali tried returning up the hole

  to be dancing his victory dance – hole blocked.

  Bali must have thought that I blocked the hole

  to kill him, ho!

  So Bali ripped Toraapi’s mighty head off

  and threw it so hard at the blocked hole

  that the hole shattered into daylight. What a monkey.

  Then seeing me on the throne as the new king

  must have proved my cunning. Bali rushed at me

  slapping me wildly. Not a word could I blurt.

  “Entomb me? Coward bro!” he kept saying

  as he kept slapping me. I only got free from the snappy

  slaps when I made it to Matanga.’

  Chapter Two: The Love Pact

  Rama meets Sugreeva.

  Burgeoned brooding primordial buffoonish trees

 
husking their mushroomy

  honk about the free-drifting

  vales and hills –

  the free-drifting vales and hills

  cooped with paranormal

  beings and goofy beasts.

  Rama and Lakshmana trudged diligent there,

  certain that Sita was taken by Soorpanaka and her ilk.

  Rama remained shocked at his own shocked state

  on returning to the cottage, after battle,

  and not finding Sita indoors.

  He had madly dashed from ant to bird to deer to ravine

  crawling for news about Sita

  and had stooped before banana, custard apple and bright

  star clusters

  then fallen before the chakravaka birds that sleep alone

  but they just sealed their eyes

  self-cuddling

  on lotus beds.

  Then he’d pleaded with Godavari river

  but of course Godavari kept schtum

  fearing Raavana

  and watched instead Rama

  hurling himself deep into feeble heart-breaking begging.

  And now what chance landing upon his moiety,

  his heart’s half somewhere in this wilderness?

  Walking foot-sore weeks and weakening

  and scarce trained by Sage Viswamithra

  for zooming upon a captured fellow …

  Novices travelling hopelessly south

  seeking support for recovering a noble lady.

  Novices are in utter distress.

  Help please, urgently for two

  who have now fallen asleep beneath a tamarind tree.

  As it happens, above, on a branch sat a monkey

  who saw the brothers holding hands in their sleep

  united like the nail and the quick.

  Such brotherly affection

  drew tears from the monkey for his own brotherly rift.

  The tears hit Rama on the cheeks and woke him.

  Rama lectured his brother against crying

  and only stopped when he heard from overhead,

  ‘It is me

  who is crying for loss of his brother’s love.

  I am an exiled king. I am requiring justice.

  You do not seem to be sent by my brother, to kill me, ho.’

  The brothers made acquaintance with Sugreeva.

  Repasting with the exiled king and his army, they heard

  Sugreeva’s tale that ended thus,

  ‘And here in Mount Matanga I idle about safely.

  Bali is cursed by Sage Matanga

  that if he step into these precincts his skull

  will shatter most fragmentatiously!

  In the meanwhile, my brother has reclaimed the throne

  and also he is bagging for his rampant pleasure

  my wife, my Ruma.’

  Rama was hooked by Sugreeva’s grief,

  ‘That scandalous abductor of your queen.

  My own loss shows it’s a looty-mark on my name.

  I must become a brother to your cause, but how?’

  Sugreeva replied, ‘Ho Rama,

  can you beat Bali?’

  To test Rama they went where seven trees stood in a row.

  Mountainous trees surviving four dissolutions of the universe.

  Their branches swept so high they flopped into the heavens.

  Measureless seemed the span from the base to the crown.

  Said Sugreeva, ‘Bali can shake this leafy tree leaving it

  leafless, blank.

  Bali’s body absorbs half the strength of the enemy he kills

  so his power is rare, ho!

  These days, Bali’s chest, when he is fighting, becomes thick

  as one of these trees?

  Can your arrows even pierce …?’

  Rama’s response: focus. He twanged his bow

  whose resonance echoed through hills and valleys.

  Then Rama shot an arrow BUT not

  through just one tree. Rama’s arrow went through

  tree two tree three

  tree four and so on till it shot through

  all seven trees in a row

  BUT not only that

  it carried on through the seven ooperworlds

  AND not only that

  it carried on through the seven seas

  and through all things in seven

  before retiring to its nesting point in Rama’s quiver!

  All who had seen Rama’s arrow-miracle bowed.

  ‘Is more than my wildest surmise. I beg forgiveness.

  You are truly the saviour who can be ridding Bali.

  A while ago we saw Raavana

  flying with a woman.’

  Rama near swooned at how smirched he must appear

  to have lost his wife. He became withdrawn awhile.

  ‘Surely it must be your wife, hey.

  Once we have removed Bali, I pledge

  to summon a monkey army for your cause.’

  Chapter Three: RAMA

  Sugreeva and Bali fight for their right to the monkey throne.

  Sugreeva’s roar shot brazen over the mountains.

  Bali bounced back a roar from his cave bed

  as his eyes spat fire and he ground his teeth,

  ‘Wahay, wahay, wait up, youngster!’

  Bali’s wife, the moonlike Tara, cautioning,

  ‘Ho, he would not be putting a foot your way.

  He may be inspirited by the power of this Rama human,

  talk is spreading about this invincible archer …’

  ‘My cracking wife, your voice is nightingale

  -ish

  and your style is peacockian

  but you ladies tell-tale bicker-snicker.

  I hear Rama wears Truth’s crown.

  Could such a man, who sacrificed his right to the throne

  upon a kid brother, could he meddle between brothers

  by siding with one, with my sly brother, yo?’

  ‘Sugreeva is still your blood, ho.

  Is he not younger?

  Besides, who does not deserve a hearing?’

  Afraid to push the matter further,

  Tara stood back

  as Bali seemingly expanded his frame in battle punch lust.

  From behind a rock,

  Rama saw this giant

  and whispered, ‘Lak-

  shmana, is there any

  rival body-spectacular

  in the world?’

  Lakshmana now

  had misgivings,

  ‘Is Sugreeva trying

  to involve you

  in more than a

  common rift

  between monkeys?

  Of the brothers, who

  is correct here?’

  ‘Do you not think

  brotherly strife

  can be pinned

  on all species?’

  ‘We are keshatriya

  who stand in the op

  -en …’

  Silence. The monkeys slapped their broadened chests

  and grappled.

  The balls of their feet clashed,

  emitted sparks, sparks gobbed from their eyes

  but Bali was soon smashing up his wee brother.

  Smashing him up till

  Rama drew an arrow

  then out from behind his hiding place he shot it hard.

  Like a needle passing though ripe papaya

  the arrow sped thoroughly through Bali’s back.

  Bali was struck,

  ‘Who, moulded by earth bend me wriggling dying?

  Who cowardly nail my meat, so hard, hey?’

  Bali was now spilling blood from his prodigious heart.

  Dying to perceive his killer

  with one inordinate shakti

  he roared his fingers back into his own torn juicy depths

  with all his might

  he screamed

  yanking out through his own front – the arrow!

>   Dead-God, Yama, gawped at Bali with crazy awe.

  Gods generally applauded brave Bali.

  Bali almost fainting, read the name on the arrow

  and double-checked the name in shock

  and again.

  RAMA

  The shock of defeat and death was nothing to Bali

  against the spiritual shock

  that this demon-foe was become his foe.

  To himself: so my wife, my Tara, was right …

  How could I be so uppity, hey …?

  Rousing his final terms, Bali said,

  ‘O Rama, lord of

  culture, justice and conduct –

  have you kicked into dust your own codes?

  Who’ll now wear Virtue’s badge? You chuck it lightly

  by slaughtering the head of a monkey clan.

  I was revering you, hey.’

  Rama, who had come out from behind his rock,

  ‘In your hot-blood you have shown little respect

  for your brother’s virtues. He protected the throne

  but you slapped him about for it.’

  ‘What is this judgement, hey? When two parties

  are in dispute how can you befriend one