Ramayana Read online

  Chapter Six: Rocky Woman Show Up!

  Rama revives the ideal woman and contemplates her story.

  On the outskirts of Mithila,

  a fabled city where they would rest and meet its king,

  the sage took the boys past a neglected ashram.

  Rama, by the entrance, walked over a raised

  slab-stone. No sooner had he touched the stone

  than the stone was enlivened by his foot.

  Before him the stone whirled upwards

  into the image of an immaculate curvaceous woman.

  The curvaceous woman

  appeared a mirage at first

  then fleshed into a miracle

  of flesh and blood!

  She stooped before Rama, and poured from her

  ocean wafts and tender flower scents,

  ‘May the Lord bless your feet.

  That you are rooted at heart.

  How long I have felt this broad-sided justice.’

  Not looking

  in the slightest way stirred, Rama turned

  to Sage Viswamithra and enquired after the woman.

  Said the sage, ‘This ideal beauty is Ahalya.

  Formed by the gods

  then raised here on earth by her mentor, Sage Gautama.’

  The sage told Rama, it was natural

  that Gautama and Ahalya wed

  when they fell head-over-heels.

  Once married they were the perfect brain-to-brawn couple

  ever-after.

  But one of the supreme gods, Indra it was,

  been always horny for Ahalya. He lost self-control.

  One day, as Gautama went for his river wash

  and prayers at the bank

  Indra was like a cloud ready to burst!

  And burst he did by spilling down to earth

  as Ahalya’s husband. Exact-same copy.

  But hornier! Horny as

  Ahalya and Gautama on their marital night.

  Ahalya was naturally enough most pleased

  and surrendered screaming her great jollification.

  As the first round of the intercourse peaked

  through the woods

  Gautama cottoned on to

  Ahalya’s

  fabric-tearing

  lust-cries.

  He was hot on the cry trail and arrived home

  watching a bed couple bonking

  for round two! An eyeful for an eye fool!

  Gautama saw the buttocks of some poltroony fellow

  leap off his missus and turn into a cat

  sneaking off for a cat-flap. Gautama said,

  ‘O cat, I say it – cursed be your body,

  covered all over with rude-appearing slits!’

  The cat meowed away, freckled with rude-appearing slits.

  Indra would become the butt of jokes in heaven.

  He would brood in a lock-up with darkness for a friend,

  neglecting his worlds. Brahma would eventually forgive

  repentant Indra by blinking each of those slits into a gem.

  Most gods are not so lucky winning forgiveness

  no wonder Indra’s called the Gemmy God!

  Back to Gautama, who was still bristling – now with his wife,

  ‘Lateral lecher, I say it! I have not satisfied you too much?

  May your frisky features turn into a

  lateral

  granite

  floor-slab!’

  Ahalya’s pleadings were off the pace:

  she was humiliating herself by saying,

  ‘Who’s the real Gautama?

  How is it, that cat was my husband?’

  Too damn late it all was …

  Ahalya felt a silicon feeling sludging slowly

  through her feet and upwards

  her joints senseless firming slabby.

  Gautama sensed he may have been stung

  by a charso-bee, poked by a hornswoggle: in short, duped!

  He pitied his pleading wife

  and sneaked-in a get-out clause,

  ‘Ahalya, I say it – your salvation

  may it one day come at the feet of Rama.’

  The sage then waited for Rama to speak.

  Rama, stock-still,

  by the ashram which was overgrown with shadows, said,

  ‘What is it in nature’s diurnal housing,

  nature’s inward store and safe-keeping

  that it take to its heart something

  wished into nothing?

  Why or how does this, the mightiest of all, Nature,

  revive desolate

  ash

  into scented being again?

  What is this pulsing beneath my feet

  that knows what I do not?

  What am I become

  if I would not bless

  what nature would not immaterialise?’

  The sage pressed for more,

  ‘But nothing is in itself, Rama …’

  ‘It appears this woman was taken

  from the sacred vows of marriage

  by another man, albeit a god in mortal form.

  Could Gautama keep her at home

  and permit his reputation’s casting out?

  Yet Ahalya has served her punishment.

  I say, let us be measured

  only by the path we intend.’

  Gautama, had been amidst thorns, behind the ashram,

  praying for Rama these years.

  He now rose

  from his hunched state and was watched

  lighting up like a starry night. He was seeing his wife –

  his wife with a lavanyakam flower in her hair

  nearing…

  The perfect pair hugged to the pealing bells in the distance.

  Rama blessed them so their minds

  be meted for fresh beginnings.

  If only all our world’s misunderstandings

  were blessed by Rama

  and our failed loves could begin, with stars in their eyes, again.

  Book Second: The Marriage Bow

  CHAPTER ONE: WAS THAT LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT?

  CHAPTER TWO: THE MARRIAGE BOW

  CHAPTER THREE: CHOODAMANI

  CHAPTER FOUR: LADY IN WAITING

  CHAPTER FIVE: TWO WISH

  CHAPTER SIX: GOD BLESS THE … KING …?

  CHAPTER SEVEN: FATE

  CHAPTER EIGHT: GOLDEN SLIPPER NANDIGRAM GOVERNMENT

  Chapter One: Was that Love at First Sight?

  Rama arrives in Mithila and is struck by a woman on her balcony.

  Fan your imagination on Ayodhya’s look-alike: Mithila

  with its towers turrets domes

  all golden or pastel,

  and in a gentle season

  the ground glittering with cast-off

  jewellery –

  a snapped necklace dashed mid-dance,

  or nuisance diamonds during a passionate embrace

  discarded!

  And no Mithilan craving to bag the casual

  chucked-away pearl

  for such is the manner of the rich among the rich

  in caring sharing Mithilan fertility,

  that perfect match for an Ayodhyan.

  Rama and Lakshmana fanning their gaze

  on swings strapped to trees swaying with couples

  and nearby, the girls

  wore a length of keshauma cotton

  that whirled about the body

  and pointed

  to the S type

  anklets.

  And pointed to the bell-topped toe-ring on each toe,

  each toe-ring specially designed to suit that toes’ darling mien

  and speaking a while longer of toe-rings

  some girls wore the cheeky come-on rings that were

  double-bosom’d

  and filled with a

  tinsy knocker

  dingling its own tantalising tune, hiehie!

  What’s more, all girls strode about wondrously bar
efooted!

  All rehearsed love tunes or danced to soft gomgoms,

  no wonder Rama and Lakshmana

  smiled to the music of their hooting, their panting!

  The brothers walked past the hotshot array

  of wide-moustached

  culgee-turbaned archers come from near and far

  to put their pinging bows to the test. And there,

  whilst by the stream, Rama’s

  eyes lifted upwards

  and there across on a balcony

  from where the cool breeze blew off the balmy sea

  a woman in shining

  kausheyam silk

  with a spotted deer border

  and with eyes brilliant as the lotus

  and with her feet all of a sudden rooted

  so she looked the double of the goddess Lakshmi!

  Rama’s second take

  on who is that, is that

  the beauty of the world

  across on the balcony

  observing the jamboree …?

  And her eyes fell

  according to the exact second of the cosmic dial

  that we call fate,

  on Rama’s eyes

  at the same time

  as Rama’s had flown

  startled upon hers.

  Their heartbeats doubled on the same count

  and harkened in a shared breath.

  The harkening damsel was

  Sita

  who was taking in her familiar Mithilan view

  when she fell on a feeling of greater familiarity

  punctuated by the sorrow of utter unknowing.

  Whilst Rama dazed at her beauty, Sita dazed at his

  and thought to herself how this must be

  the veiled recognition

  that we call love at first sight.

  Together they had walked, aeon after aeon,

  fresh as bold new lovers, under the starry lanes

  in heaven:

  he as Vishnu and she as Lakshmi.

  ’Twas in this incarnation,

  under all the depredations a human endures,

  and a lapsed memory

  being amongst our most humbling torments,

  through which each looked upon the other:

  a stranger.

  When Rama disappeared from view, Sita felt

  a withering

  for her heart had absorbed a love dart!

  Wounded by love, virgin love, she remained.

  The bangles on her wrists slumped downward till,

  by her attendants, she was spread on a soft bed

  far from the formal mood sought by her obligations.

  She was heard murmuring,

  ‘… emerald shoulders … blue-sky beauty …

  who are you?

  why have you invaded me

  pinching my heart to leave me ashamed?

  i wish you stood before me now as a god…

  only to you i feel i would freely speak my mind …’

  Her maids lit cool lamps,

  whose wicks were soothed with clarified butter,

  they found even this flame proved intolerable

  and Sita survived only by soft light so the maids tempered

  the darkness with spread-about luminous gems.

  Dark rings fringed her eyes.

  When she moaned that her bed was not soft

  her maids made her bed on a plate of moonstone

  with layered softest petals

  but the flowers wilted.

  Ache prolonged agonised writhing ache.

  Darkened days and nights left her quizzing,

  ‘Was he only hallucination …’

  And Rama? Enough to say,

  when at the lodgings, he sensed his whole being

  being sacrificed to a girl with curly locks across her forehead!

  Rama wondered if she was married

  but if she were

  would he have felt such a fine dart of desire?

  On one whose bow was schooled in the art

  of demonology, on one whose bow depended

  demon death,

  now fondling his mind with a girl in flowing silks for armour,

  with a bow of sugarcane and flowers for arrows,

  how could she so softly have felled him?

  Rama smiled at the irony.

  Chapter Two: The Marriage Bow

  King Janaka seeks a husband for his daughter. Rama must shoot an arrow to win himself a bride.

  Sage Viswamithra introduced the boys to King Janaka.

  He knew the king of Kosala would be struck

  by royal stock turned warriors armed with weapons.

  Indeed, the king, straight off, considered Rama

  a fitting match

  for his daughter.

  One drawback, the king had a massive arrow-bow

  and guess what, the king had set a condition

  that anyone man enough to pluck his daughter

  would first have to pluck up their manliness

  by one: lifting the rather large bow

  two: bending it

  three: stringing it

  and fourthly: shooting an arrow

  so, fifthly and ultimately, becoming a stunner’s lover ever-after!

  The sage was hardly surprised to hear

  countless suitors had failed the big five,

  turned stroppy then stormed the palace

  to make off with Sita.

  Charming.

  The king mourned his ambitious condition,

  ‘The elect man, or such a one, must win Sita.

  You know, Sage, she was not from a human born.

  I am reminded all this

  world belongs to Mother Earth.

  Only in the fancy of a mirrored mind

  do these belongings become subject to a pomp kingdom.

  Once upon a time

  I zigzagged through clumpy mango

  and guava groves

  traipsing through banana plantations to reach a stone-field.

  It was there I sought to bless the earth

  and our peoples with peace.

  Using a rough old ditched plough

  I cracked the barren with straight furrows.

  Not stopping till the sun was behind the citrus trees

  when from a furrow I heard a sound. Of crying.

  Tired and panting, I delved the furrows

  and soon found what my blade had brought out:

  a baby.

  A radiant baby girl

  borne by warm earth whilst cradled on a wooden arch.

  I lifted up the naked baby.

  Suddenly the ground cracking, laboured aside

  as the arch lifted upwards!

  The arch creaking out wider and wider till it rocked

  gently and fully upon the earth.

  A giant bow, it was, with a golden string.

  Imagine a bow being nature’s umbilicus.

  From a deadly weapon sprung cuddly life.

  I swaddled the baby that my wife and I had craved.

  We named her after her birth place: Sita: furrow.’

  The sage seemed unsurprised and suggested,

  ‘Are there divine tinkerings in birth and bow matters?

  Perhaps the gods favour you in some way.

  Would you bring the bow out for Rama to inspect?’

  Locked in a box and smouldering with aloeswood smoke,

  the bow was hoicked on eight pairs of enormous wheels.

  It was so huge it proved incomprehensible in one view:

  unless you stood off you’d never see it whole!

  The onlookers feared that the king rather keep his Sita at home

  and free from some regal dunderhead –

  why else be harsh with his conditions?

  They worried for Rama that he must lift the bow.

  A gong rang out for Rama to pluck the bow.

  The audience watched him calmly measure it up.

  They clos
ed their eyes and hummed prayers

  to bother the imminent crush

  but to their great mystification

  the boy was raising the weapon and placing it on a toe.

  The bow, wide as a rainbow, was being drawn inward

  under the non-stop force of Rama’s grip on the golden string.

  Gosh!

  Rama kept at it till the arrow, heavy as a tree,

  got blasted into the clouds

  and who couldn’t hear, when the bow tips touched,

  as it shattered like two mountains rent apart.

  And who couldn’t see the firework display –

  the flying bow-shards exploding through the eminence!

  Having missed some man-to-be in his fullest to-do,

  Sita still pined for her balcony scene. From where she watched

  perfumes being sprinkled

  and people donning their best and dancing at the palace gates

  relieved the king’s judgement had been judicious,

  that a fit lad would meet his match. How cool!

  Cool enough that the gods

  hovered earthward, in human form,

  and mingled among the humans who were

  dancing the sandalwood-sprinkled night away!

  Chapter Three: Choodamani

  The wedding of Rama and Sita.

  Is there anything gaudier, more glorious or heart-breaking