PRINCE IN EXILE (8 page)

But the shakti of Brahman had been stripped from him. Taken away as the price for wielding the Brahm-astra. He had known the consequence of unleashing that great celestial weapon. Yet he had accepted the responsibility and fulfilled his dharma, saving the lives not only of those who resided in Mithila City, in the direct path of the asura invasion, but of all mortals who would eventually, inevitably, have faced the death-wrath of Ravana. 

And now he stood before Parsurama without any force other than his own mortal strength. 

And what good was mortal strength before the legendary power of the axe-wielder? He who had cleansed the earth of Kshatriyas so many times before? 

How could one solitary warrior stand before such a legendary challenger? 

All these thoughts flashed through Rama’s mind in the fraction of an instant. 

And then the time for thinking was past. 

The Brahmin attacked. 

Parsurama charged at him, his axe swinging at Rama’s neck with enough force to carve another passageway through the mountain. The Brahmin moved with preternatural speed, belying his white-haired ancientness, the stockiness of his physique and the heavy mass of his upper body. There was no time at all for the young rajkumar to dodge the blow, nor did Rama have any weapon with which to deflect the swinging axe. The Bow of Vishnu, however potent its celestial origin, was but a bow after all, not a shield or sword. So fifty thousand breaths caught in as many throats as the watching Ayodhyans saw their prince face the rushing gleam of that legendary blade without moving an inch. 

Rama simply stood his ground. 

He let the axe come flying at him with all the force of Parsurama’s headlong-rushing swing. He let the blade of the axe strike his exposed neck, catching it on the right side of that narrow stem, midway between his delicate collarbone and strong jawline. An artery pulsed once in the instant before the blade struck the dark, almost bluish skin. Sita’s eyes were among those that saw the throb of Rama’s lifeblood in his bared neck, as distinct as the flutter of a bird’s heart in its exposed breast. A single pulse, like the beat of an unheard dhol-drum at some distant funeral procession. And then the blade struck home with enough impact and shakti to shatter a mountainside of basalt rock into smithereens. 

THREE 

The axe struck Rama’s neck with a sound like nothing human ears had ever heard before. It was less a sound than an absence of sound. An utter blankness, as if the axe had struck the trunk of a tree so thick and soft that it had penetrated right up to the haft. But even the softest treetrunk would have issued
some
sound, the faintest of pulpy thumps perhaps, or the tiniest thwack as the enormous axe-blade imbedded itself in its bed of living cellulose. Whereas when the edge of that legendary blade hit Rama’s neck, it gave off no sound at all. Or rather, no audible sound. 

What ensued instead was a vibration that began at the exact point where blade met skin, and spread outwards in ever-widening concentric circles, like a boulder flung into the midst of a placid pool. The edge of the blade hit the dark skin of Rama’s neck and shivered visibly. Sita could see the blade blur with the force of the vibration, like the wings of a hummingbird. She saw the vibration travel back up the haft of the blade all the way to the hilt, into Parsurama’s fingers, his hirsute forearms, his muscle-knotted arms, all the way up his thigh-thick shoulders, up his own bullish neck, to his teeth, which were set to keening, and his face, which twisted into a paroxysm of agony and disbelief as the vibration shuddered through his entire being, his eyes widening not with anger now but with shock. At the same time, she saw also the air itself, the very air around both combatants, filled with motes of dust from the rockfalls in the slanting afternoon sunlight, tremble as the wave of vibration passed through it. She saw the concentric circles of unheard sound spread outwards from Rama until they encompassed the entire ledge on which both men stood, outwards to the tips of the lowered lances of the front-liners - these shivered briefly, startling the men who held them - and then, with the sudden impact of a whiplash, the wave struck the Ayodhyans themselves, herself as well, rippling back behind them, passing through them like some invisible force. And she felt the keening in her teeth, a screaming absence of sound that filled her brain with agony, and her heart clenched tighter than a smith’s bellows for one frozen instant, before the vibration moved through her and past her and behind her, spreading throughout the silently watching lines of Ayodhyan soldiers and their beasts of burden. 

At that same instant, Parsurama was flung back across the length of the ledge, a distance of some twenty yards, his body bending over as it travelled, until his back struck the side of the mountain with a shuddering impact. A crack appeared in the mountainside, causing entire plates of stone to shiver and crackle all around, and the white-clad Brahmin fell to the ground, landing, appropriately enough, upon his knees. A cloud of dust from his impact with the mountainside drifted down like powdery snow, coating his bare sweat-glistening shoulders and hirsute body. 

He remained there in that behumbled posture for a long moment, his face still twisted in the expression of agony with which he had reacted to the keening vibration of the axe striking Rama’s neck. Then his face cleared, and realisation came to him slowly, in stages. First, the disbelief. Then the shock. Then the anger, sudden and white-hot, flaring in his eyes and nostrils. Then the fear, unfamiliar and long forgotten, a stranger to his indestructible heart. Then, finally, like a shedding of scales, the understanding, clear as water, upon his face. 

Parsurama rose slowly to his feet, setting first one heavy foot upon the surface of the ledge, then the other, pushing himself upward as if the very effort of fighting gravity was too much all of a sudden. He stared across the sun-drenched ledge at Rama, standing exactly as he had stood all this while, slender, a mere boy, clutching the Bow of Vishnu in his right hand. 

Parsurama said softly, yet loudly enough to be heard by every set of ears throughout the ravine, ‘Who art thou?’ 

There was no reply. Rama remained standing as he was, staring at Parsurama with that expression of calm serenity that Sita had already begun to recognise as his
look
. 

Parsurama asked again, louder: ‘Who art thou? Tell me truly.’ 

Still Rama stood motionless, serenely silent. 

‘Who
art
thou? I beg you, answer me.’ 

The entire ravine was silent now, listening. For the urgency in the Brahmin’s voice, the tone of panic, was alarming. They were watching a demi-god brought down to his knees. 

Finally, when nobody expected a response any longer, Rama replied. His voice was as soft as a gentle breeze, carrying the lilt of distant birdsong, so soft one barely knew if one heard it or imagined it, like the imagined sound of the ocean echoing deep within a large seashell. 

‘I am Rama,’ he said simply. 

Parsurama stared at him. The Brahmin’s eyes were as stunned as those of a lion bested by a gazelle. The axe in his hand still trembled faintly with the aftermath of the supernatural vibrations. 

Rama fitted an arrow to the Bow of Vishnu. Sita started as she realised that the arrow had appeared out of nowhere. She knew quite well that there had been no arrow or quiver when Parsurama had tossed the bow to Rama earlier. Then again, there had been no bow either a moment before that. If the bow itself could materialise out of thin air, why not an arrow? 

Rama pulled the cord of the bow back with the familiar leathery sound of hide being stretched to its limits. Sita could almost smell the resin, feel the coarse grip of the curved wood, hear the minute sounds the wind made as it thrummed on the taut bowstring. And she could feel, as if she was within Rama’s mind for that fraction of a second, the utter raptness with which the archer set his eye on the target, a drawing of all focus on that one arrowtip-point to which the missile must travel, the fading away of all other sights and sounds, all other sensations, leaving one in a capsule outside human time and space, outside one’s own self almost. It was a sensation that Sita had adored since the first time she had experienced it, standing with a tiny child’s bow to her small shoulder at the tender age of three, Nakhudi and the bowmaster of Mithila Palace standing to either side, whispering instructions in her infant ears. 

Rama spoke again, quietly. ‘You know this arrow.’ 

Parsurama was still standing as before, his axe clutched in his right hand, slightly trembling, his face and stance that of a man who had suffered a mortal blow to the nether regions yet would not look down at the damage. 

‘It is the arrow with which my Lord Shiva razed Tripura to the ground. That single arrow was sufficient to bring the city crashing down to dust and cinders.’ 

After a pause, Rama said, ‘Then you know what will happen if I loose it at you.’ 

‘One of two things,’ Parsurama replied. ‘Since I am given the gift of invulnerability, it may not destroy my being. Yet it may take away all the accumulated penance I have acquired over millennia of bhor tapasya. Or it may destroy my ability to move through worlds as I do now, simply by cleaving through barriers with my axe.’ 

After a moment, the Brahmin added slowly, ‘The choice is up to the one who looses it.’ 

The silence on the mountainside was palpable. If this were a katha told by a daiimaa at bedtime, Sita thought, no child would have believed that fifty thousand watching people could make so little sound. 

Rama said, ‘You are a Brahmin, and I have been raised to honour and respect all Brahmins. For Kshatriyas have changed much since last you set foot upon this mortal realm, axe-wielder. It is true that once our caste was arrogant and thoughtless, that we were raised as brute hunters and warriors, slaves to our baser instincts and incapable of understanding the Vedas, let alone reading them. But that has all changed in the millennia since you last cleansed the earth. Now Kshatriyas have come to accept their secondary status to Brahmins. Some, like my father-in-law Janaka, whom you know well, are as learned in the Vedas as any maharishi and as pious in their lifestyles as any tapasvi sadhu. The code of Manu Lawmaker, founder of my dynasty and builder of mighty Ayodhya, is followed religiously by all Kshatriyas. Thus have countless Kshatriyas offered their swords, their wealth, their kingdoms, their daughters, and even their lives to Brahmins on demand. My ancestor Raja Harishchandra did so, and was ever exalted in the annals of Suryavansha history. So did my grandfather Raghu fulfil a Brahmin’s demand for guru-dakshina even though it bankrupted him. Only a fortnight past, my father surrendered my brother’s life and my own unto Brahmarishi Vishwamitra, sending us untested into the Bhayanak-van to battle Tataka and her hybrid hordes. I could relate countless instances, yet let one last one suffice.’ 

Rama had not relaxed his hold upon the arrow as he had spoken this long speech. But he had let the arrow point upwards, towards the sky, the better to enable himself to address the Brahmin. Now he lowered the bow and aimed it once more at the axe-wielder before he continued speaking. 

‘I could wreak a terrible fate upon you if I so choose, with the use of this astra. Yet I shall honour your caste and knowledge by giving you the choice. What would you have me do, Brahmin? Destroy your ability to move through the seven worlds, rendering you as immobile and hapless as a broken-winged bird fallen to gritty earth? Or shall I decimate the accumulations of all your millennia of hard penitential meditation? Answer me quickly, for this weapon, once armed, must be used.’ 

The slanting sun had descended and now shone directly at the western face of Mount Mahendra. Its rays found the white-clad Brahmin, turning his beard and hair into wreaths of flame, and his eyes into glittering hot diamonds. For a moment it seemed that the legendary one, pinned down by the searchlight beam of the sungod, was about to burst into flame himself. 

Parsurama raised his axe, his eyes glinting with moistness in the hard sunlight. ‘I pray to you, do not deny me my ability to move through worlds. For then I shall die slowly but surely, just like that broken-winged bird you spoke of. But since you must unleash the weapon of Lord Vishnu, then use it to destroy my penance and all the boons I received as benediction for that penance.’ 

‘So be it,’ Rama said, and without another word he loosed the bow-cord. The arrow left the Bow of Vishnu with a sound like a comet streaking over the earth’s surface, close enough to be heard yet not close enough to touch. The sound was a boom that filled the entire sound spectrum. The arrow ignited in midair at the instant it left the crescent of the bow, and Sita found herself, as if in a dream, able to see every yard of its progress, as if time itself had been stopped still by the arrow’s loosing. It blazed fiercely as it travelled, with a fiery white-hot light, and the air warped around it, turning rainbow-hued and rippling angrily like the corona of distortion around an intense flame. It seemed to take aeons to reach its destination, and when it did, she saw the result with dreadful clarity. 

The arrow encountered something
around
Parsurama, some invisible force sheathing the Brahmin. It paused briefly, and a screaming, banshee-like sound rose from its point of contact, as if this unseen barrier was unimaginably hard to penetrate. Then, with a noise like the tip of a blade piercing a wine-bladder filled to bursting point, the arrow penetrated the invisible bubble and entered the person of Parsurama himself. But even as it entered, the arrow passed through his being, leaving no puncture wound nor releasing any blood or causing physical damage. Whether thereafter it entered the face of the mountain or simply evaporated, she did not know. That was all she was given sight of.