Ramayana Page 3

  Lakshmana must go too.’

  The sage agrees, then appeasing the king,

  ‘Being at home, being in touching distance

  shows closeness in love

  but if a seed is not removed, if it is made to sprout

  at the heel of its parent tree

  will it not be

  stunted?

  Will not Rama leave me also

  for what is becoming his correct trajectory?’

  King Dasaratha’s eyes glaze over.

  He is remembering the day, aeons ago it was,

  when he was out hunting.

  As huntsman he was used to firing an arrow by hearing alone:

  sight not needed when you are a hotshot!

  Except on this day,

  whilst he was hidden in leaves and waiting for prey at a lake,

  on hearing a splash

  Dasaratha shot an arrow

  into what he sensed was a deer.

  Instead he heard a cry …

  A boy’s cry. A boy who had been carrying

  two baskets on a pole

  each of which held his blind parents.

  The frail blind dad touching his son’s head;

  through feeble tears, cursing the king,

  ‘I pray you learn too

  what it means to lose a son.’

  In the stonking new hall, before his audience,

  was all the king’s great wit and wisdom mustered,

  ‘Call my sons.’

  Chapter Three: Kill that Mother!

  The boys enter a desert where they meet a raksassy. They are then trained by the sage to become warriors.

  Perfect drought everywhere horizon’d in a desert.

  Heat licking heat

  in a death-lust where only is growing Death.

  Deep in the desert and somehow unfazed,

  as if this were not miracle enough,

  a mere boy wearing a divine blue demeanour

  was steadfast walking. Nippy walker

  whose feet were barely touching the ground

  for the speed of his crossing too was unnaturally composed!

  So who was this warrior-looking walker?

  Rama, of course! Rama! The mighty boy

  already with lithe but supernaturally powered limbs.

  Rama was being followed

  by his brother Lakshmana

  and a bit behind was Sage Viswamithra.

  They were north of Ayodhya

  in the sun’s anvil. A sun that slumped its deadening weight

  on stone and rock

  turning rock and stone into fine-spun sand.

  Gaps in the soil gaping.

  The sun’s anvil immobile

  blurring the line

  between dawn noon evening.

  The bleach-bones strewn

  were from decayed animals.

  Enormous horror jaws gaped

  into a frozen lunge after, even just one,

  wa

  ter-

  dr

  op. Into these dead jaws

  had rushed

  the serpent and elephant alike for shade

  and died there. Fossilised tableaux.

  The sage explained this was the sole way

  to the sacrificial grounds, adding,

  ‘Here was once a jolly peopled zone

  with gardens and grounds, like bazaars, bright with fruits

  BUT

  a demon family, a family of raksassy lived here once.

  The couple had two boys who were born

  hippopotamusly tough!

  As toddlers, the boy’s larrikins involved

  killing for the thrill! The big-head parents

  boasted of the edible end-product

  the children’s play-dates were becoming.’

  The sage told the boys about a little saint, Aga,

  who had his hut-home in the forest,

  who felt compelled to cease the murder spree.

  He turned

  gnat-sized

  then flew

  at the neck

  of this laughing-his-head-off braggart dad.

  He flew at that mid-laugh neck

  whilst it was stretched

  for it was easier to prod and puncture in a sec.

  At his final breath the dad

  zipped about

  like a wailing balloon when its air pours out

  then slopped alongside

  some redolent berries.

  When Tadaka, the mum, and the brats spotted

  their splatted fellow

  they’d have swatted, in kind, this gimp saint,

  but this gimp – where’s he?

  The gnat-sized saint

  buzzed a curse

  that tore mum and the youngest brat from their former

  physiques

  into smudged

  malformed forms of themselves.

  Heart-stopping to stare at!

  Saint Aga had deformed them into extreme versions

  of their ogre states.

  The young son scrammed and in scramming discovered

  he had a wheeze

  and had ankles shagged with spikes

  so the boy not so much scrammed, as trudged

  to loaf with arsooras in the underworld.

  His dear brother, Mareecha, had got away

  owing to the shape-shifting properties of certain raksassy.

  Mareecha was beautiful at switching into a deer,

  and had sneaked away for Raavana’s kingdom.

  Said the sage, ‘I have a dread fear

  Mareecha will cross your path again, one day.’

  Rama was unperturbed

  as the sage shared news about the mum

  who was cursed to live alone,

  ‘… in this forest which she turned to a desert

  by her single gift:

  the gift of breathing ill fires.

  She’s called a scorcher …

  If her sons were strong as ten hippos each

  Tadaka is rampant as a hundred hippos.

  And her diet being raw humans

  she’s called a man-eater.’

  The boys smiled nervously as the sage sniffed the air.

  ‘Tadaka pierces anything alive with her spiky trident.

  Not even here will you hear the shrill beetle

  or any tweeting sweetie bird. All been spiked.

  Tadaka roams here still. My vow of

  non-violence means you must step up.’

  The sage stood Lakshmana back with him

  for it was clear Rama was being tested.

  Rama pleaded,

  ‘Where is she?’

  Before the sage answered the question,

  the question was being answered

  by a rackety storm

  ploughing towards the sage and the boys.

  What formed through the ploughing, before Rama,

  was a normal-size woman

  but with eyes gobbing fire,

  with fangs dribbling molten.

  All of it hung on an old mama

  bereft of her boys and her husband.

  Good grief!

  Rama felt her blue-mood

  when he used the word ‘mother’ on asking the sage,

  ‘This poor mother – how should I kill her?’

  Said the sage, ‘You must not be considering her

  as woman. Think not she is woman. Think only the epitome

  she presents you.’

  The thought struck home.

  Though Rama ached for his three mums’

  hugs

  he knew ‘mum’ was not the warrior word

  and hardened as recipient

  of this fiend’s three-pronged spear

  which came at shrill speed

  for his brows

  and arrived within eye-shot

  just in time for Rama’s nimble-fingered

  stringing of his massive bow

  so his arrow flew just in time
/>
  to shatter

  The shattered spiky shards flew up

  and gaining speed

  rained sharply down

  into the mum

  stabbing her

  in her tender

  flesh-parts.

  Tadaka was dead.

  Hoisted with her own petard.

  Spectating overhead

  the gaggle of ebullient gods

  made life move fast-forward across a once desolate region.

  They made flowers plurp into dandy lives of purples and tangs

  shaded by newly sprung panasa, palm and mango trees.

  The gods chimed into the sage’s inner voice,

  ‘Grant this fine-handed boy the deepest know-how.

  He may be the saviour!’

  Over the coming seasons, upon his willing wunderkind

  the sage delivered the subtlest A to Z techniques

  so both Rama and Lakshmana mastered

  the art of defence, and if necessary, attack.

  Rama perfected the hardest mantras,

  that once recited

  allow you to ignore those gobby rogues:

  Hunger, and her dry beau, Thirst.

  Rama was fast becoming awesome:

  he could shoot an arrow exact through ninety palm trees

  to pierce a juicy apple

  and could shift a hill

  or heave-ho an irksome cliff.

  But he had to master restraint

  for the sage advised against causing a stink

  on nature’s blossom harmony.

  Said the sage, as he sat midst crags,

  ‘I will now teach you bala and antibala mantras.

  These are essential for martial know-how. Once mastered

  you will gain instant insight to select the good path

  from the gnarled entangled junctures.

  Plus too, when asleep you will be shielded from demons.’

  The sage next taught them how to hone mental focus

  for summoning and harnessing the Dev Astras,

  that is to say, the snazziest weapons of the gods

  that can only be activated by mantras. Mantras only

  can return the weapons or else utter chaos

  when weapons back-fire!

  And mastery of a mantra leads to best tool control.

  What a bruising time

  that left the boys with singed limbs and digits

  when they practised conjuring Astra weapons

  because some could be hot as hot coals

  and some mere

  smoke-wisp.

  When the boys were really skilled

  it became a cinch, a doddle, sending back each Astra

  to its celestial shelf!

  The sage then loaded Rama with weapons

  for the journey. Trooping through the air

  out of nothing

  were brand-new weapons of shiniest divine-gold

  paraded before Rama, as if to say,

  ‘Lord, we are yours to command.’

  Not forgetting Lakshmana who also earned

  with flying colours blades, spear-like missiles

  and diamond-set scabbards

  to rival Rama’s that stood at his feet, as if to say,

  ‘Lord, we are yours to command.’

  Chapter Four: Our Exchequer Ganga

  Sage Viswamithra relates the importance of nature.

  ‘Just as our stories recall and revive our long line,

  so it is we only attain greater knowledge of our circumstances

  once we feel the earth we are

  daily sharing.

  My dear boys, every inch of the earth

  is a divine memory.

  As one of the five original elements

  Mother Earth has been here from the off.

  Though each human trace is erased

  from the universe and the Earth,

  though each corpse be million years under,

  Mother Earth will always bear

  an impress of every foot that trod anxiously

  and ecstatically, through good and evil, upon her …

  Upon her … till Kala consume all again.

  And what of Ganga? Ganga is the greatest necklace –

  its riches draping our world.

  Just look at her streams flowing down from the Himalayas

  and kissing all they touch

  for blooming essence of rare herbs and wild fruits.

  Ganga feeding all that beards and garbs the earth.

  Ganga nursing the parched throat

  dying for a sip.

  The souls of each being are cleansed for salvation

  once their ashes replenish the roots

  by flowing through water.

  Ganga rushing down cleansing

  and bearing so each stitch touched

  becomes, in essence, holy!

  The wizened sage was speaking from within

  the mist-covered wood on a mountain height

  and as the mountain exhaled its tender vapours

  the sky was calmed

  and calmed too were the boys

  who were soothed into sleep.

  Chapter Five: Utter Foul Sacrifice

  Sage Viswamithra attempts to make his sacrifice.

  Now from the highest mountain peak

  in Sidhasrama, said the sage,

  ‘We have been travelling across the great heights

  for only a dozen sunsets, or so it seems,

  but many seasons have elapsed

  and how well you have fought for insight

  in yoga, philosophy and the ways of demon destruction.

  Here is where we will perform the great sacrifice.

  We must toil to attain our vision’s purpose.’

  The sage went high-low preparing,

  and the brothers brought cartloads of sages

  from near and far

  who themselves had been busy propitiating the gods

  for this culminating battle.

  The rabble of arsoora and raksassy

  was running about in the sky

  like feet tapping on the floorboards upstairs.

  Their pongy rain indicated to the brothers

  an attack on the sacrifice was getting dirty.

  The sages lit fire from a hundred-plus trees

  and circled it with chorus prayers

  so song and flame ascended with a pomegranate brightness.

  But what came down from above

  were distress cries from supposedly tortured children.

  Each trauma or sorrow was reconstructed by the demons

  and played aloud. Endless mimic voices.

  Horror radio! Psycho crèche …

  The demons, who lived in the lowest regions

  of the ooper-world, were scuppering the sacrifice.

  The sages felt unduly boo-hooey

  at the next set of mimic-whines

  from sisters, mothers, grandmothers

  supposedly under attack:

  whose shadow is at my nape

  release my wrists fiiiieeeendd

  my sons will my husband is coming

  HARAAMZADAAAAH!!!

  The demons were having a wild time.

  To further unsettle the prayers

  they thrashed down vat-load

  A gonad fell in a sage’s outstretched palm,

  urine dribbled the beard of another …

  The delicacy of the story forbids further embellishments

  of this nature, save to say

  many an abattoir must have been ransacked and spilled

  at devious intervals.

  The battle was hotting up

  so Rama made a solid promise,

  ‘Belt out your prayers about this spiring fire …

  We will shelter you.’

  Rama and Lakshmana fled

  to different mountain ranges

  and became pure arrow action

  shooting thousands of spears at dizzy
ing speed,

  so many arrows

  shielding the sacrificial fire

  from being doused or spattered.

  So long as each multiple-arrow-round made a penumbra

  the sacrifice stayed prayer-happy.

  The desperate demons resorted to earth eruptions

  that flung lava.

  Lava, mimic-cries, gassy stinks and suchlike malarkey

  were thinning, were fading …

  Somehow the sages were pulling off the sacrifice

  with extreme-focus imbrication of mind and body

  till each sage was a flame-ball burning evil from earth!

  May this story be forgiven for digressing

  but dear Sages

  please do not be forest-firing too much

  this cuddly planet whilst engaged in an anti-demon combat:

  who would rather not be harbouring a floorboard of evil

  than be losing their home sweet home?

  Returning to our story,

  now that the region was freed from the demons,

  in the place of eruptions were wide-ranging rainbows

  because peace was advertising itself

  as promoted by the mountain-to-mountain-wide calling-card

  of spangly colours.

  Rama, Lakshmana and the sages saw, flying

  through the rainbows,

  and couldn’t help but wave

  at, the birds, birds, birds.

  Even cheeky cuckoos.