Ramayana Read online

  ‘In this world it happens time and time again,

  one man is deafening and thousands feel the shock.

  It is not the one who does not listen that alone suffers.’

  Raavana interjected, ‘How can this Sita,

  famed for her beauty, desire a mere mortal?

  Is it a blessing or a curse but every woman ever

  has looked with love-heart candying eyes upon me.

  These riches that Kubera endowed in my person

  pull me beyond my mind’s vast engine.’

  Mareecha sounded wearied, ‘This seems a gargantuan

  flaw

  leaving your heart

  exposed.’

  Whilst Raavana talked, Mareecha mused to himself

  about the nine types of men, who if angered, cause ill;

  the nine being the rich, the rogue, the spy, the soldier,

  the priest, the doctor, the poet, the bard of the charmed voice

  and, of course, the ruler.

  Raavana stood up

  and simply cheered himself,

  ‘… so no more of this rhapsodising and pious mumbling.

  You only can help me Mareecha.

  Get Rama gallivanting for you

  and I the rest to his piety will do!’

  Chapter Four: Golden Deer, please!

  Sita sees a golden deer and wants to keep it.

  A golden deer with precious stones

  naturally bristling from its legs.

  Wahwah, thought Sita whilst strolling around Panchavati.

  Then rushing indoors to Rama,

  ‘That animal over there followed me to our gate.

  What silver streaming circles over its skin,

  its hooves must be lapis lazuli. What high-grade gold.

  Could we keep it here?

  Or if it is slippery to catch could we not keep

  its skin for when we return to the palace?’

  Lakshmana looking outside,

  ‘See the other deer

  are keeping back from it. Let it nibble away.

  Surely no goldie creature lives.’

  Said Rama, ‘Vishnu’s creations are endless and beauteous.

  How can we know for sure

  such a creature couldn’t exist?’

  Said Sita, ‘If you two debate this till supper

  the deer will run off

  becoming once more illusion.’

  They laughed at Sita’s comic timing.

  Lakshmana persevered it must be an ‘infernal thing’

  and, ‘… it could be Mareecha, the raksassy,

  famed for changing into animals.

  No end of hunting kings has this deer-demon killed for his

  dinner.’

  Rama’s hunch was contrary.

  He wanted so much to please his unpampered wife

  and said to Sita,

  ‘Your wishes are my duty.’

  Then ran for the deer. The deer ran far off

  but kept pricking its ears in a cheeky come-on,

  and each time Rama nearly caught up,

  the deer would draw its hooves to its ears

  then spring

  zigzagging away

  to emerge on a hill

  with a passing cloud behind it.

  How long had he chased the deer …?

  Lakshmana might be correct. Sighting the deer again,

  Rama shot an arrow,

  shot an arrow direct into its comb-haired belly.

  Mareecha, who all along had been the deer,

  and had been running

  at the speed of fear was slain.

  Still he remembered to complete his mission,

  and screamed out in Rama’s voice,

  Rama deafened by the deer. The deer dying

  was turning into saint, a saintly raksassy.

  Wholly improbable! Mareecha’s cry

  sped

  for Sita’s ears.

  Sita flipped,

  ‘Go Lakshmana.

  I heard Rama.

  He is surely hurt. O please, now, go!’

  Sita sobbed at Lakshmana’s protests,

  ‘Don’t you know your own husband?

  Who could hurt him? Would Rama cry out?’

  Sita looked daggers at him,

  shouting go!

  Lakshmana felt caught. He said, ‘I will go

  but on one condition.

  Jatayu must be close.’

  ‘Go!!!’

  Chapter Five: One Shot: Thirteen!

  Rama and Lakshmana are surrounded by Mareecha’s army.

  Ambush extraordinary.

  When Lakshmana caught up with Rama

  and word ringed the woods that before reaching his army

  Mareecha had been killed

  Mareecha’s army had near-ringed Rama.

  Into this forest cauldron near bubbling with heat

  fell Lakshmana. Two against two hundred at least.

  Training from Sage Viswamithra must be employed, NOW.

  Crimson streaked the sky. Rama smiled,

  ‘You come at a charmed time.

  I sense foul shapes behind hills and trees.’

  Said Lakshmana, ‘My right hand is throbbing,

  look how my arrows fume and ooze smoke.’

  The dead man’s dear army came forth on sea monsters.

  They beat their great gongs for battle. The battle began.

  Hundreds of gold-tipped arrows

  like sun-rays danced towards the brothers.

  The brothers jinked and funked

  till each arrow was shielded or flunked away

  though one or two left them scorched.

  Rama’s bow was bent back

  on itself circumferencing

  almost to a circle.

  His heron-feathered arrow after arrow

  blitzed the scene. The brother’s arrows largely met flesh.

  The cauldron was clogged with death cries.

  Round after round beat back

  raksassy arrows and tridents.

  Forth stepped the valiant Trishira who thundered his chariot

  at Rama

  then fired such a potent volley of arrows

  that three landed in Rama’s forehead

  yet Rama called out,

  ‘This is being struck by flowers!’

  Rama fought back with arrows. The two men’s arrows

  met head to head and fell away.

  Rama and Trishira now fought with swords. Their power

  equivalent to that between a lion and an elephant in combat.

  Trishira was no turn up for the books

  eye-poker from the cradle

  he stabbed Rama in the chest!

  This merely impressed Rama who admired a skilled fighter

  and lamented the tragic waste of a craftsman turned rogue.

  With sufficient wits

  Rama managed to counter so his blade

  went through Trishira’s heart

  as a snake slips down an anthill.

  Lakshmana’s powerful arrow-rounds soon diminished

  the remaining soldiers.

  It was horsey-face Kora next,

  Raavana’s brother, who stepped forth in his chariot –

  ornamented with refined gold, with poles made of beryl

  and its sides carved with fish, flowers, moons and stars.

  He punched his chariot through the skies

  then struck arrows down at Rama,

  invincible arrows like sparkling fires,

  so many close-leaning arrows at once

  that Rama was pierced.

  Kora stormed for Rama

  but Rama, streaking blood,

  had the measure of Kora and with an almighty arrow

  he severed Kora’s gold-notched standard

  bringing the craft to ground.

  Rama fired off six selected arrows at Kora’s head.

  Kora slapped back the arrows with his own arrows.

 
Kora fired four arrows that tore at Rama’s legs.

  The arrows sliced through

  Kora’s thick-shouldered yoke with one,

  his four horses with four,

  the charioteer’s head with the sixth,

  three smashed the triple pole,

  two the axle,

  Kora’s bow and arrow with his twelfth arrow,

  and the thirteenth,

  the thunderbolt arrow, ripped all over the shop

  the floor-flooding Kora body.

  Any soldiers still with hope

  now scrammed from the scene.

  Scrammed from the scene

  of thirteen wowser arrows, by jiminy!

  Chapter Six: How to simply Sweep a Lady off her Feet

  An old man visits Sita whilst Lakshmana is away searching for Rama.

  A rat-a-tat-tapping at the cottage entrance

  at which the very trees held their breath.

  The air. Did it move? No. Wind-God scarpered.

  Nature’s inner-turmoil at an elderly sage in ochre robes.

  Even Avari, the River-God, flowed softly

  for fear the sage send it off course

  with a curse, from his mouth,

  for no good reason popping out.

  ‘Is anybody … there? Anybody … to welcome

  an old but benignant sage?’

  Trembly watery voice.

  The sage was lean, holding a staff and begging bowl.

  Sita had been praying for Rama when she answered the door.

  At his first Sita-sight,

  the old man buzzing

  abutting his own teeming blood.

  Sita stood there: even in drab garb

  she looked a grab!

  She was a streak of lightning

  felling the crusty oldie.

  He noticed her brows like the bow of a goddess,

  the cups of her breasts propped

  and proud as lotus buds

  her skin clear as a jewel

  and her complexion shining as if floating with gold.

  This not being reward enough

  the sage spoke his finest Sanskrit,

  ‘Some alms for one who kindly always

  prostrate prays for the correct three-world conduct?’

  The old man watched Sita contemplate an offering.

  He saw too the faint golden circle

  and knew it was a circle of untouchability,

  the Circle of Chastity.

  He saw Sita remained inside it.

  He wondered if he could tease her out of it.

  ‘I cannot go to the kitchen so could you please

  help yourself in there.’

  ‘But madam, an alm is bestowed. Not taken.

  Am I looking a crook?’

  ‘You must be a mighty sage to be so deep in the forest.’

  ‘It is rumoured.’ The old man, unbeknown to himself,

  blushed.

  To obtain the rice grains

  Sita must leave the Lakshmana Rekha.

  Sita furrowed her forehead.

  She looked outside.

  As if lost

  in a moment

  when a moment is definitive

  Sita crossed

  the threshold, the golden Rekha

  and as she walked across it it

  vanished … Sita watched

  her grains

  fill the old

  man’s bowl.

  The sage was already imagining

  his impending life of Riley now the impediment was gone.

  He thought to himself, I shall make her queen of my empire

  and spend my life executing her cutie commands.

  How amazing was my sister to spot the perfect lady.

  I must make my sister the queen of my empire

  whilst I go tooty-footing everyday with Sita …

  He was already forgetting

  Sita would be queen of his kingdom. Sita enquired,

  ‘What brings a frail sage so deep in this forest?’

  Somewhat swoony-mooded and smiley,

  ‘I am here to adore the omniscient ultimate: the

  chuckerbutty.

  He, with ten astounding heads, cornucopias life.

  Have you not felt the chuckerbutty?’

  Sita felt bested; parched,

  ‘I had heard bad rumour.’

  The old man thought he’d win her in his elderly state,

  ‘Each lady he chucker, that is to say, walk around,

  he makes divine.’

  ‘Is this chuckerbutty a raksassy?’

  Nothing hard to lean

  at, she stared

  outside.

  ‘Indeed, raksassy are the most blissed

  but not lax as they are publicised.’

  From somewhere hardening in herself,

  ‘I think … their salad days are done.

  My Lord’s mission – to rid them; building peace …’ ‘No

  meagre man can do that.

  It would be like a rabbit goring an elephant gang.’

  The old man was so close that he stank of tamarind.

  ‘Did not once a mere two-shoulder man called Parasuram

  once coop this mighty ten-headed Raavana

  till he was weeping for release?’ Sudden

  the old man’s blood shot up. He ground his teeth.

  Like heaped snake skins

  his wrinkly skin flaked off for the floor.

  He expanded to his normal

  freak finicky contours.

  Sita was startled.

  ‘Hello Lady,

  now before you I am

  the divine Raavana.

  O swanlike one

  my ten heads have never before bowed to another.

  You are beauty’s flame.’

  He took off his crowns

  dropped to his ten brows

  and knelt before Sita.

  Sita impassioned herself and –

  ‘Do I look the touching kind?

  My Lord’s hands are now flying for your heart.’

  Raavana liked her even more for the spirited attack.

  ‘Rama’s darts cannot catch me.

  Sooner expect a mountain to split from a straw touch.’

  Raavana was a true lover:

  only careful wooing was the way he would float her boat.

  But he felt rushed, it came out too cocky,

  ‘Come now to my crystal bed in Lanka.

  Let’s be getting tip-top pleasure!’

  Sita waxed back, enraged,

  ‘What gulf there is between a lion and a jackal

  there is between you and Rama.

  What gulf there is between a nectar and sour gruel

  there is between you and Rama.’

  And on she could have gone comparing

  gold and lead, elephant and cat, sandalwood and mire

  EXCEPT that

  rather than vilely grab Sita and cheapen her beauty,

  Raavana, from under Sita’s feet,

  simply by the power of one gentle hand

  was scooping up

  the ground beneath her.

  Sita was being lifted.

  He carried the lot to his chariot which was powered by

  a tandem team of lions!

  A team of lions that flew vamooooooose …

  Sita was still shouting, ‘You goonda!’ to Raavana

  Poor old tired sleepy Jatayu

  heard screams above his tree.

  He flew out and was soon out there wide awake

  alongside Raavana, saying,

  ‘You are a famous king,

  perhaps even the god of all gods.

  Many have called you the ten-peaked King of Heaven.’

  Raavana’s roaring beasts speeded their car.

  Jatayu caught up again and sought reply,

  ‘How once I too, like all my tribe, loved you.

  But look at this acting hoodlum conduct.

  Save yourself, Raa
vana, and pass me Sita.’

  ‘Save yourself! Save yourself Jatayu. Flap away.’

  Jatayu calmly, as ever, in a cut-glass loquacity,

  ‘Raavana, remember the folly of the sand-piper

  sleeping with uplifted feet so it keep the sky

  from falling on its nest, on its young.

  The wife of a king deserves protection.

  What kind of king steals another man’s wife?

  Do the wise lay open their conduct for public censure?’

  But Raavana cut in again that Jatayu should leave.

  Still Jatayu persevered, ‘Raavana, justice, for good or ill,

  is grounded in a king. Let me help you

  recall your good deeds.’

  Raavana felt irritated and flinched arrows at Jatayu.

  But the lord of sky-rovers

  began flapping his enormous wings.

  The flapping stirred up so much dust

  that a whipped storm

  beat the arrows back.