Ramayana Read online

  than a good old-fashioned wedding?

  The husband will henceforth be nourished by a wife

  but the bridal parents must relinquish the breakfast hugs

  a daughter has daily blessed upon them.

  A wedding is sighs, a wedding is laughter,

  a wedding is footloose arms-in-the-air clamorous enjollament,

  a wedding is

  Rama’s father receiving a jolly invite

  from King Janaka

  for a bride and groom embarking on their belle vie,

  ‘so kindly come with all your peoples to celebrate’.

  On the sandy streets of Ayodhya, on the streets of Mithila

  who is not hearing the elephant-loud trumpeting,

  All you beauties please be coming

  by-and-by to partying party party!

  Suddenly the whole of Ayodhya

  on the streets ready for the trek to the kingdom of Kosala.

  When the huge mass assembled

  then shuffled onward

  it seemed as though the world was in procession

  surging like the waves and tides of the Ganges.

  The gathering can be summarised by admiring the youth:

  when a boy fell off his horse

  and into a palanquin, and into the arms of a honey-smelling

  lover –

  the lover didn’t sting him with a slap

  instead they spun themselves into laugh aloud gupshup

  and would not need parting,

  couples in a strop

  soon patched up,

  and dumbbell-armed lads stood by a river

  offering to carry across their dreamboat,

  the dreamboat that sought no better transportation!

  Camels were happy with their necklace sacks

  of margosa leaves to moisten the parched throats

  so they continued wearing that comedian smile.

  All listened to proud talk about wondrous Rama

  winning the most beautiful woman

  as proved by the ultimate praise

  that this Sita

  had thighs

  shapely as

  elephant trunks.

  Four days jollity later, they arrived at King Janaka’s capital

  to the sounds of bugles and gomgoms.

  The miles-long line of the party on the royal road

  was embraced into homes, palaces and camps

  as the heart-strings of Ayodhya strummed

  along with the heart-strings of harpy Mithila.

  The two kings met

  and in an instant two powerful states were bonded,

  for marriage is not about two people

  but about two tribes forging fellowship,

  couples commingling their communities

  so affection’s commerce

  is forever being overlapped

  and broadened in the great flow of humanity at one.

  A father was escorted to meet his son

  and that father, King Dasaratha, pumped with pride at Rama

  whose stature now seemed manly.

  Then, amidst the carousing, came the big day.

  Rama, with his robes as though dipped in saffron,

  blazing along on the Royal Elephant in fullest paraphernalia

  through the ecstatic streets.

  On the marriage platform, Janaka offered flowers, incense

  and other symbols of health and wealth.

  A sacred fire was kindled and incantations rang out.

  Then Janaka brought in his daughter.

  The congregation gasped because Sita

  seemed the double of Lakshmi who had stood upon a lotus.

  Sita’s kausheya-silk dress was gold and the edging raised gold

  which was woven close as inseparable swans.

  Janaka held a round pearl on a gold leaf, the Choodamani,

  then he placed it in Sita’s hair above her forehead.

  The Choodamani was a crown serving the elect face.

  When Sita was alongside Rama, Janaka spoke,

  ‘Here is my Sita. In giving Sita I give my ground.

  Look at her. Never tire of looking at her.

  Take her hand in your hand

  and evermore she will walk alongside you

  as your own shadow walks alongside you.’

  On the marriage platform, Rama’s heart-stopping moment:

  he observed for the first time his bride.

  He who had lifted a godly bow

  became woozy with fear and wonder:

  would this be the beauty of the world

  that he had observed, that day on her balcony?

  As he lifted the veil, to his great release,

  he saw once again the face that had completed his being

  now complete his being once again

  as he hoped it would for ever more.

  Impossible to imagine how she felt

  as she wondered upwards to observe

  the face, the exact-same face,

  she had once seen from her balcony

  beaming at her, again!

  The face that had made her senseless

  now made her deepen with ocean-scented aromas

  as though she were flown atop a lotus leaf.

  Chapter Four: Lady in Waiting

  Mantara worries for Queen Kaikey’s future.

  Mantara, the whisperer and dream-pot stirrer

  who maddened sleep. Mantara, the soothsayer

  dire! Mantara, with her high back,

  made forecasts that made news on the stands

  that struck you between the eyes!

  Mantara the maid, Queen Kaikey’s trusted maid.

  King Dasaratha’s favourite wife, Queen Kaikey,

  knew from Mantara that the wizened king had been

  hearing

  howling torments

  on the spines of comets.

  Queen Kaikey knew from Mantara that astrologers

  had predicted the king’s stars, that Mars and Jupiter

  were aspecting the same house,

  in other words, his numbers were nearly up.

  The king had then suddenly announced he would spend

  his last days throne-free.

  The queen knew Rama would be next on the throne,

  and good job too. Rama was being readied for the throne,

  albeit in great haste.

  ’Twas then, Mantara rushed in to see Queen Kaikey.

  Something was on Mantara’s mind. She began mockingly:

  ‘Why is Rama’s mother giving everyone gold gifts?

  Has she come into another fortune?’

  The queen merely grinned. The king’s three wives were equals.

  Next move, but a tad more direct, ‘Why is it

  you skip around

  like a girl? Have you reckoned fully your future?’

  Despite Mantara’s weird mood, the queen held out

  a diamond necklace gift

  to celebrate Rama’s great fortune.

  Said Mantara, ‘What, is this Rama your son?’

  No response again. Then very direct, risking everything,

  Mantara smashed the jewels

  down at the tiles!

  Sweet Queen Kaikey, in her regional accent, japed,

  ‘You are getting picky-dicky, Mantara …

  Is my taste too old-fashioned for you?’

  ‘It is not jewels I need. My dear Queen,

  like that necklace, you too will soon be on the ground …’

  ‘That is a very hard fall for me, Mantara.’

  Instead of heeding the queen, the queen’s jugular

  was felt to be up for grabs by a calmer voice now,

  ‘Your beauty

  my beloved Queen

  and your youth,

  as I’m sure you know, are your glittering prowess.

  But beauty, like a torrent, like youth,

  rushing down the mountainside as it upends flowers and leaves


  might for the duration

  hold the observer in a spell.

  When it passes,

  or lies slumped like a heap of mess,

  what is left? After youth and the passing of beauty?

  Dear Queen, in its place you will be a sandy bed!

  When the diamonds about your delicious neck

  highlight your wrinkles,

  when your most kissable cheeks

  sag like cheap ear-rings

  you will be counterfeit!

  A bad copy, not stirring recognition of former glamour.

  Plunder and oblivion. Plunder and oblivion

  brushing you aside

  with the back of the king’s hand or the king’s children’s

  hands.

  You will be, as other queens before you,

  ring-fenced far away from your darlings and your darling

  king.’

  Queen Kaikey pushed Mantara for more,

  ‘Give me a mirror.

  What? Have I slept so bad last night

  that my face is chip-chopped by the choppiest sea-wrinkles?’

  Mantara, who had raised the queen,

  cut in,

  ‘Where is Bharat? Your own dear son?

  Why was he recently dispatched to your father’s house

  when the future of Ayodhya is finding new feet?

  Why is he not making his stand?’

  The queen leapt up, alarmed by her own lively activity:

  ‘Wonderful news! Rama is becoming king

  and are you not mortaring and pestling some fresh

  clove-scented mischief?’

  ‘My sorrow is for the doom that overhangs you.

  It reminds me of the little dove entering

  the jaws of a wildcat.

  Dear Queen, I was there once,

  back in the days when the middle-aged king sought you,

  late one night he was at it persuading your father

  that despite his

  age this teenage girl should be his bride.

  And how did he persuade your father?

  Well I overheard our king promise him

  that your firstborn would overleap his other sons

  and become king – in return for your hand!

  And that is how you were won.’

  Queen Kaikey sensed her skin ripple with wrinkles,

  or fear of them at least. Her frail retort,

  ‘I do not see the difference between Rama and Bharat.’

  ‘So why is it your dancing feet seem so heavy?

  Rama will banish your own Bharat or break him

  or behead him!

  You will be untouchable in your status

  of an ex-

  queen

  of an ex-

  king.

  At best, you will be stooped to a heel

  serving Rama’s giddy, gold-gift-wafting mummy-jee

  who would love to be chucking, like yesterday’s rice,

  the kings favourite dish.’

  ‘Never. How dare she even rise to it!’

  Thus the queen was contracted.

  Chapter Five: Two Wish

  Queen Kaikey tells the king she would like to claim her wishes.

  King Dasaratha hurried to fill in Queen Kaikey

  that soon as tomorrow Rama would be king

  and could he, the ex-king, book a date

  for gadding about

  the cucumber garden with his no.1 queen?

  His silken joy felt burred

  when he heard the queen was holed in the Bile Room,

  an annexe part of the palace where you could cool off:

  a posh shed kept purple, unkempt, with serpent skins.

  He walked into the Bile Room and saw Queen Kaikey

  with kohl smudged, like ash, on her upper cheeks,

  wild roaring hair as though tugged

  by chimps. Yet to the king she was still his

  Naga goddess!

  In the gloom, the king apologised

  for not telling her the great news sooner.

  He wondered what anger she was burning off.

  ‘Dust and rags have become my fate.’

  Her luscious voice roused the king into youthly moods.

  ‘But Queen, let us drive about in our chariot

  waving at the revellers.’

  Futile hope. He sat on a footstool by the queen

  and heard her insist he give her her due.

  ‘You remember the battlefield,

  in that war between the gods, when you rose to the high

  heavens

  to rescue the mighty-fighty Indra

  and found yourself prickled with arrows?

  It was I who drove you from the dark fields

  and plucked arrows out from you.’

  Suddenly his sizzling joints ached:

  he couldn’t look at the queen

  for her beauty was making him idle:

  she seemed a goddess lowered from the heavens

  and hunkered in the Bile Room.

  ‘Yes, my Queen, I remember it well.

  Any chariot would have killed its wheels over me.’

  ‘I nursed you, keeping you safe from public gupshup.’

  The king solemnly replied,

  ‘I have not forgotten nor will I ever.’

  ‘You remember you insisted on two wishes.

  You said I must have what is pleasing my heart.’

  ‘I did, indeed.’

  Always when he came back tired from court

  Queen Kaikey never sought details or meddled

  but waited at the doors to tickle him with tender hugs …

  And mostly for this she was his

  favourite wife. How unlike herself she was now, so stiff,

  ‘I was not intending ever to request my wishes.

  But I shall ask for my wishes now.

  If you refuse, you will be the first of the descendants

  of the Sun God to go back on your word.

  Monarchs, all, will shun you. Common people will laugh at

  you.

  You have heard it tell of Saibya –

  to keep his promise to a hawk he cut the flesh

  clean away from his own bones and flung it to that bird.’

  ‘Fear not, Queen. Speak freely.’

  The queen took a deep breath and found herself

  speaking her wishes,

  ‘Crown our son

  Bharat

  king.

  Banish

  Rama.

  Banish Rama deep in the forest for fourteen years.’

  Staggering to

  his feet

  the king looked faint.

  He seemed blinded in the way he looked away,

  ‘Will the kings not shun me as a foolish dotard?

  Rama will do as told for he never acts in two ways …’

  The queen was now unstoppered,

  ‘Send presently a messenger to bring home Bharat.

  And tell Rama to begin his fourteen years.’

  With his eyes still shut, the king whispered,

  ‘Are you a demon?’ ‘Don’t you curse me, King!

  I never asked you to come looking for me with your glee.

  Go back to Rama’s mother.’

  And so they spent the night to-ing and fro-ing

  in insults and attempts at persuasion by the king.

  The night ended in the Bile Room;

  a queen on the floor, a glorious king on a broken couch.

  Chapter Six: God Bless the … King …?

  Rama is informed of the king’s wishes.

  The roaring coronation fire put out,

  the crowded guests

  for Rama’s anointment were informed the ceremony

  would be delayed and, worst of all,

  Rama’s date with kingly fate was now kaput!

  Rama’s favourite elephant, Shatrunjaya,

  dropped his head in despair and beat his feet.

&nbs
p; Gossip blushed each man’s cheek

  that the sweetest of queens, Queen Kaikey, was to blame.

  Rama met the king and Queen Kaikey,

  the king meekly cried out, ‘Rama.’ then left.

  The king was bad out of shape, he was like a deer

  trembling before a rumbling-belly tigress.

  Queen Kaikey took charge of the two wishes,

  ‘It is your duty to help your father keep his word.

  You must stay away for the full fourteen term,

  returning along with Sita, if you take her, only then.

  The king prays your sojourn is safe. Is uneventful.’

  Rama listened as Kaikey continued,

  ‘All the while you must be adorned

  in tree-bark and deerskin only.

  And live on the fruits and roots you’ve plucked.

  If you do not satisfaction these terms

  you will shame your father

  in this and further worlds.

  It is your duty as a son.’

  Rama broke down the shock,

  piece by piece, within himself

  and absorbed all

  without a single question, replying,

  ‘I do not crave office. I am happy finding kinship

  in the forest. My only sorrow is that, since a father

  is divinity incarnate to his children,

  could not my father, my guru, break me

  this news?’

  Rama wasn’t expecting an answer. Nor got one.

  The queen, so distraught at having to execute the strong arm,

  longed for a long spell in the Bile Room. Especially