Ramayana Read online

  can reach Lanka, Hanuman. So wealthy in wisdom and might,

  yet Hanuman, why do you tarry?’

  But Hanuman looked back

  like one who is wading through the cloths of night

  and to himself

  has become a benighted cloth he cannot unfold from.

  ‘Hanuman, to your own self it seems

  you are lost …

  Hanuman, who you truly are

  I will find him for you now.

  Hanuman, your backbone is made from a jewelled club,

  your body moulded from a trident. Hanuman, your head

  was chiselled from a diamond discus. Hanuman, your father

  is Wind-God

  and he placed that club, that diamond and that discus

  in your mother’s mouth. Greatly against her will.

  Thirty swarthy months past

  and Hanuman, against natural curving-time

  you coalesced into a baby

  issuing from your mother’s

  mouth.

  Child when you were

  you could leap up high.

  Red like a twilight was something shimmering in the west

  and you thought it must be a rare fruit: one day,

  you leapt to pluck it.

  Hanuman you leapt

  over 300 yojanas

  and you headed for the sun!

  Not so impressed was Indra.

  He smacked you with a thunderbolt

  and to a mountain peak

  you fell.

  Your jaw was broken. Even your name

  comes from this event, Hanu means jaw. You are Jawman.

  Brahma felt bad for you – your bite was weak.

  Brahma compensated you by making you invincible in battle.

  Brahma gave you freedom from the jaws of Death,

  though Death – only you can choose when you seek him.

  Hanuman, only you so tired of life

  will choose the way you die.

  Hanuman, only you if you tire of life

  will choose when you die.

  So threatened by your new powers was your father,

  that as your father he was able to lay a curse on you.

  He cursed you so your own powers you would never know.

  That curse, I have powers to repeal.

  You are the son and heir of Wind-God

  and earning his power and glory is your birth right.’

  Hanuman’s heart surged at the bulletin.

  Whilst Jambavan performed the service

  Hanuman swung his tail and with each bow-shape of his tail

  the army watched Hanuman making his mark in the world!

  Jambavan calling the while,

  ‘Arise Hanuman and keep arising. You are our saviour!

  Hanuman, you are taller than any monkey.

  Hanuman, but you can rise to any stature.

  You can grow so big, Hanuman,

  bigger even than Vishnu

  when he strode through the stars

  dunking down into hell

  the demon Mahabali …’

  Hardly was Jambavan being heard

  for Hanuman’s head, Hanuman’s stonking simian bonce

  was bigger than each bosomy cloud

  each Hanuman caress-breath

  causing a floccus

  a gasping of hie!hie!

  that drizzled

  each cloud into Hanumanian creams …

  The army bowed to their massive darn hard leader

  who was already beating against the heat

  hot-trotting his monkey power through the murky ocean!

  Chapter Seven.two: The Sex Threat

  Hanuman inspects Lanka and searches for Sita.

  Now watch this for astute monkey machinations.

  Hanuman in Lanka, fly-size, exploring the capital.

  He recorded information about the golden gateways

  and dazzling dark buildings that seemed, at their height

  hovering in air.

  He noted how Lanka was divided into four complex quarters

  by wide roads and multi-storied mansions.

  Each quarter was heavily guarded by raksassy armies

  geared for a gory good ruck.

  He watched raksassy going about their business

  wearing varied looks and all seemed to, snug-like, fit in,

  from the full-bodied beauteous type to the odd ilk.

  The odd ilk walked around bazaars and along rivers,

  some were dwarfish and held hands with a monster-

  shadow sized fellow that had a single

  eye or ear,

  some were lying in the open with piping necks

  and were snogging those with knots and braids

  for dark and wan skin,

  some with every bodily pore

  hair-crammed were being tickled by a lover with a jackal’s

  jaw and nose,

  some with faces of boars were dancing

  with some who had faces of buffalo,

  some with goat or dog head

  sang to their lover who had lions’ lips and horses’ brows,

  some with feet of cows were carrying

  the lover who had feet of mules

  and all lay or walked or danced or sang freely

  under the Lord’s happy sun …

  Hanuman flew away from the bright light

  and approached Raavana’s palace with its prodigious

  palace moat.

  The moat-waters were whipped by a local wind

  so they circled with a sea power, all the while

  inhabited by sharks and serpents.

  Flying over the moat, as serpents lunged up

  to gulp a monkey snack, Hanuman went indoors

  into Raavana’s palace

  which resembled Indra’s Amaravati.

  The palace alone was 100 yojanas long and as wide,

  a bamboozling city in itself with winding staircases

  leading underground to endless chambers

  and further down bunkers

  and from ground-level rising up to the heavens

  each floor was a web of narrow walkways and rooms

  and intricate hidden chambers and trapdoors.

  Hanuman went down one convolution

  and spied Raavana’s ditched brides

  all downcast along winding staircases

  and in narrow anterooms and further down in bunkers.

  The ditched brides were being fanned by fit young attendants

  ready for the gigolo action

  save that the wives still sought the top dog!

  Hanuman flew through a hall

  and all about so many raksassy ladies sleeping

  on the patterned rugs and flashing their sand-dune buttocks:

  some semi but most, most definitely, unclad

  save for the odd cat’s-eye gem about the neck.

  Many wore pearl necklaces that were like white water-birds

  rising and falling between their breasts. Lascivious

  carnival met Hanuman

  who watched ladies sleeping atop each other’s breast

  or caught in a thigh; so many unmarried ladies

  surrendered to Raavana’s hard party calamity!

  Hanuman was ever the thinker when it was most required.

  And here he was thinking

  how it is the mind which makes the senses perform

  good or bad deeds.

  The digressive mind become dissolute

  must become subject to flesh:

  whilst the flesh hoots and toots the mind is left wafting itself.

  Yet I feel my mind, he wondered, must be well-ordered

  enough

  for as I look at beauty, unparallel’d willy-nillying

  naked, up-for-nooky, on the floor, I can master my lust;

  my mind feels bound to duty and thus to purity;

  it can observe these ladies

  without treacherous
quickie lust.

  Thus he flew into Raavana’s bedroom

  fearing to sight the cynosure of beauty, Sita.

  He saw a statue of Lakshmi and there beneath

  banking the room

  the lord, in his incomparably magnificent crystal bed, asleep.

  Hanuman flying close to admire

  battle scars from centuries past:

  great famed wounds

  from Airavata’s tusks and Vishnu’s discus

  and his shoulders

  scored with Indra’s thunderbolts.

  Hanuman gawped at the arms rounded as iron clubs,

  the fingers perfectly chiselled and enamelled

  so each twenty hands looked a five-hooded snake.

  Hanuman remembered his own mission to locate Sita

  so it’s paramount to avoid being detected,

  he thought about how ambassadors

  who fail to keep to the article of orders –

  surely they betray their master’s cause.

  Just then Raavana began to steam

  and rolled around in his silken sheets.

  The beauteous rough-haired lady at his side,

  could it be Sita? The lady woke up the lord

  who was tossing and turning in his sleep.

  Hanuman was a speck atop a chandelier, hearing,

  ‘You know Lord, you have my permission

  to end this pained tossing I see you stewing yourself each night

  in.’

  ‘Ah, Mandodari, my dear wife, what is it you mean?’

  ‘Take Sita against her will. Why seek her permission?’

  Raavana leapt from bed,

  ‘I must be at her now.’

  Chapter Seven.three: The Death Threat

  Raavana meets Sita during the night.

  The lord’s sea heaving,

  the lord alighting from his crystal chariot.

  His torch bearers had woken Sita but she had refused

  the seat in her pavilion.

  His attendants set before her stunning jewels.

  From the moon’s horribly lit-up response

  she knew they were rare godly things

  but did not look upon them.

  Hanuman was floating, above a Simsapa tree,

  on a moonbeam

  for he had at last sighted Sita. He wondered to himself,

  how if Rama should dry the ocean

  and starve earth

  for such a prize as Sita it may be worth the while …

  The lord’s grottos, orchards and pleasure gardens

  seemed washed in indigo.

  The lord appreciated scale,

  small-scale Lanka

  where he wuthered

  in heavenly made

  summers

  and now at night

  whilst constellations held overhead

  he relaxed in the evening breath,

  relaxed in Sita’s breath …

  He was all concentration.

  His dazzling copper eyes watched her.

  His teeth, white as the moon, glinted.

  He appeared to be soaking up

  Sita’s heartbeat.

  He was crepuscular: between desire and despair.

  Only the wings of his nostrils

  elevating

  basking

  inhaling the essence of woman, pure woman …

  ‘Brahma, my grandfather, never created beauty

  as you are beauty. I have flown upon his finest works.

  Not even Ahalya …

  Your earthly coloured golds and browns are a perfection,

  near an offence to aspect.

  Even your bare feet, their tan ripening skin alone

  blinds me, beheads me.

  But how sad it becomes you sitting on this green verge,

  in bark-skin.’

  Said Sita, ‘I am where I am brought down to.’

  ‘Is it your custom to dress your hair in a single braid,

  to begin new love

  by remembering, by mourning?’

  Sita closing her ears at such implicating talk.

  Raavana continuing, ‘I too am plunged

  in a furrow of memory,

  my brain grooved with your imprint …

  You are my grief, my solace.

  We are our grief, our solace.

  You have seen, all the ladies who adore me

  fell at my feet of their own accord.

  I need not ever be flirting or stoop.

  Ah, dark eyes Lady, have I not been courteous?’

  Sita, head downward the while, finally lifted

  a blade of grass

  and laid the blade of grass wall-like

  between herself and Raavana,

  ‘Do you think reputation enough to win me?

  Do you not know I am the wife of Lord Rama?’

  ‘I would not ever touch you against your desire.’

  ‘I am as good as touched.

  Yet I will never be touched except by my Lord.’

  ‘Have you, in essence, not touched me, Sita,

  when you chose to

  break free from your Circle of Chastity?’

  ‘How brave you are! Breaking a woman

  by crafting her off

  behind her husband’s back.’

  ‘My only craft my cup of beggary

  hungering only for the touch of your alms.’

  Raavana’s lust abating and rising with each

  soaring wondrous note around Sita’s cool breath.

  ‘Where is your Lord of the Deerskin this past ten months?

  He has shed you into my circle.’

  Sita gave mockery for mockery,

  ‘So many wives, chuker, circle you it seems.

  Why not come round to your wives? Do not give me

  these jewels. Give them straight

  to your wives. Why wake up the night

  begging before another man’s

  to-the-death beloved?’

  Raavana sighed. Then ordered Sita’s attendants,

  ‘As before, give my queen any luxury she desire.

  Bounty my queen with a perfect mango each day.

  All pleasures are my queen’s suitors.’

  When Raavana and his attendants departed,

  Sita stayed on the verge. Fearlessly alone.

  Hanuman watched Sita starting to cry.

  Her arms embraced her legs. She sang to herself.

  ‘If Rama is my heart

  where is my heart beating beating?

  If Rama is my soul

  where is my soul beating beating beating?

  You are my light you will never go out …’

  Then rushing for a branch

  over which to hurl

  her long single plait

  as a noose

  and up there

  herself to be hanging!

  Chapter Seven.four: You Shot-Hot Monkey!

  After meeting Sita Hanuman becomes angered.

  ‘… no, please, dear Lady, I come from Rama.

  I am here to help you. Rama is thinking about you always.

  I can try and fly you back to Rama. I can save you,’

  said Hanuman as he grew to his new normal size.

  He put on Sita’s Kosala dialect

  rather than speak in his regional tongue.

  Sita threw herself on the floor,

  crying even more now at being stopped by a … raksassy?

  She questioned the monkey about Rama, at length.

  And was impressed by his proper sequencing of thought.

  She calmed and even seemed pleased

  when Hanuman gave her Rama’s wedding ring

  with RAMA inscribed upon it.

  She sighed, ‘The more I touch this ring

  the more I am hearing Rama.’

  In exchange, so Rama knew Hanuman had met Sita,

  memento to memento,

  Sita took from her hair a pearl that rested on a gold leaf,


  her Choodamani.

  ‘This pearl was plucked from the Great Milk Ocean

  by the god Indra. He honoured my father with it.

  O Hanuman, tell Rama I always think only of him.

  Tell him Raavana has not laid on me

  a breath or touch.

  Even as you say, Hanuman, you could try to rescue me now,

  and I bless you for it.

  In our customs

  no one else must rescue me.

  Only Rama himself, with or without his army,

  must rescue me.’

  ‘Rama will be inspired to know how firm you remain.

  We will be here within weeks.’

  Sita left for her chambers.

  Hanuman felt so bad for Sita’s plight

  that he lost himself.

  Becoming again massive. So massive that he

  Asoka Vana

  pulling up trees

  with his mega-

  bare grip

  then dunking

  them back deep

  in the ground

  upside down

  till the tree

  roots were

  all freaked

  in the wind

  whilst lolling

  at the

  moon.

  The pleasure garden was a horror show.

  Raavana got wind of the mess

  and sent his army to capture the white monkey.

  Raavana’s bruisers saw a gross simian