RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (36 page)

Rama gestured dismissively. “It was all deception. You played your part well, I grant you that. No doubt your father rehearsed you well, your
true
father. For try as you might, you cannot deny that fact. Ravana is your father, and your unborn children his grandchildren.”

“They are
your
children, Rama,” she said. “Dasaratha’s grandchildren. Kausalya’s grandchildren. Heirs to the Suryavansha empire. Claimants to the sunwood throne.”

“Ah,” he said, “now you come to the quick. Claimants to the throne of Ayodhya. And in time, all Aryavarta. That was ever your father’s wily scheme. That is the reason why you hid the truth of your being with child when we were in exile.”

“I did not hide it, I was about to tell you that very day! But that monster abducted me, forcibly. You know this to be true. You were there! How can you say these things, accuse me of such terrible crimes? I am your wife. I stayed with you fourteen years in jungle exile! Why would I do that if not for love of you?”

“Or for love of your father,” Rama said. “You were only a tool in his master plan. A minor piece in his great game of chaupar, to be moved at will across the board as he pleased, sacrificed without a second thought.”

“I fought rakshasas with you!” she said fiercely. “Killed them! We slaughtered them by the thousands!” She turned to Valmiki. “Tell him, ! You were there too. Would I have slaughtered rakshasas had I known I was descended from their line?”

Valmiki was about to answer when Rama raised a hand, stopping him. “No need to debate this further. Whether or not you knew then is irrelevant—.”

“
Irrelevant?
You accuse me of being a liar and of having deceived you all these years! How can you call that irrelevant?”

“It is irrelevant to me,” Rama said coldly. “Either way, the truth is out now. This is where we stand. You are the progeny of Ravana, placed into my innermost circle of trust in order to destabilize not just me but my family, my lineage, my dynasty and all Aryavarta. For all this is part of the master plan devised by your illustrious father.”

“No!” Sita said. “I will not accept what you say. It is untrue, grossly untrue. No such plan was devised. Nor was I party to any act of treachery to you or your family. It is my family too, Rama! My children are your children. I share your bed, your table, your life. Does that not mean anything to you? After a lifetime together, would you reject me out of hand based on mere conjecture and speculation?”

Rama turned to look at her. The hardness of his features was frightening to behold. It was his war face, the face he had showed only to his bitter enemies on the battlefield, before he struck them down with sword or arrow. Never before had that face been directed at her. Yet there it was now, looking at her with such unforgiving cruelty that she could scarcely believe this was Rama, her Rama.

No, not my Rama. Not anymore.

She had no idea how a bond that had withstood every test until now could be snapped so suddenly, so cruelly. It shook her to the very core, caused her to feel a sadness so overwhelming, she felt she would drown in it. Be washed away by its power. It surged and roared inside her head, warring with the disbelief, shock and horror that swam inside her, nauseating her and and making her wish that the earth itself would open up and swallow her whole. Better dead than to face such a moment, live through this, endure such abuse and unfair treatment from the one person she had trusted above all, trusted with her very life. Why? How?

“Enough of your lies and denials, woman,” Rama said with a tone so bitter, he might have been condemning a stranger to death for an unspeakable crime. “It is pointless to lie thusly when the engineer of this great plot himself stands before us. Let us ask Ravana himself to confirm or deny your complicity!”

Rama turned to face Lord Shiva once more.

Sita turned to look as well.

She saw that Shiva had gone, vanished through the great doorway that had brought him here, presumably, for the doorway shimmered and glowed with strange, alien hues and reflections even now, just as it had before the Three-Eyed One had stepped through it to enter their world.

Now only Ravana remained there, still kneeling as he had been before. He began to raise himself up now, heaving his great rack of heads and mighty torso upon his powerful legs as he stood to his full height, glowering down at them with unmitigated expressions of pleasure, delight and glee showing on all his ten faces.

“It is as Rama says,” Ravana boomed. “Every word of it. Though I am a different Ravana from the one you speak of – a Ravana come here from a past time, long before even Ayodhya existed – yet even now, I cannot deny that I have planned and put into motion the seeds of the great plan that will lead eventually to the fruition that is unfolding here and now in the mortal plane. All that has happened on this morning in Ayodhya has been according to a well-ordered plan by me. As my erstwhile uncle Kala-Nemi has surely said to you already, everything you thought you knew until now is a lie. The ease with which Rama slew me upon the battlefield of Lanka was only possible because I permitted myself to be slain that easily. How else could he defeat the One whom even the devas could not overpower in a millennia of conflict? Rama knew this too. Just as he knew that everything he did was essential to my scheme too. Yes. Rama himself was aware that he was merely playing his part in a greater play. As were you, my dear daughter. How well you played your role! How splendid an actor you have been in this role of Sita Janaki! It is no good your pretending further. The time has come for us all to unite and take the next, final step in the greater game that is now afoot. For when Kala-Nemi, Atikaya, Mandodhari, or even Rama referred to my vengeance, they did not mean something as puerile and obvious as the destruction of Ayodhya. The vengeance of Ravana is a far greater plan, one that will impact all worlds, all dimensions, all planes of existence, and change all things known and unknown, through all eternity to come!”

Ravana raised himself to his full height, a formidable specimen, his ten heads all displaying different expressions.

“Behold!”

He spread his arms wide, all six pairs of them, green fire crackling from all his taloned fingertips. And behind him the Vortal opened again, like the eye of some great primordial beast and with a grinding scream that drove everyone to their knees, blinding light exploded outwards from the archway as it expanded to fill the entire universe.

“Rama!” Hanuman bellowed as he struggled to maintain his footing. The light blasting out of the archway was unbearable. Rama and Sita had both winced instinctively at first, and then been forced to bend over, toppling to their knees too.

For though we may be born of divinity yet in this mortal world, we are mortal too and subject to all the frailties of mortal flesh,
Rama thought as he endured the shrieking agony that seared his brain.

Hanuman cried out again, as always more concerned about his master than about his own wellbeing. Finally, he too was unable to withstand the immensity of the shakti pouring out from the doorway, and slumped to his haunches, crouched a moment, then toppled over onto his knees, bending over till his head touched the ground. He was weeping with frustration, for since his own powers had been awakened in Rama’s service, he had believed himself capable of anything.

Today he is learning that everyone, no matter how powerful, has a limit. Nobody is greater than the shakti of Brahman itself. I’m sorry, my friend, but it is a necessary lesson.

Almost as if he heard Rama’s thoughts, Hanuman’s struggles subsided and the vanar settled into a crouched submission.

Beside Rama, Sita knelt on the ground, head bowed as well. Accepting the frailty of her form and the superior shakti that blasted them and the surrounding landscape.

Rama forced himself to look around. The entire world was bathed in blinding white light. So bright, he could just barely make out the fact that where it touched anything, it was tinged with intense blue. It looked like the world was being blasted by a hurricane of epic intensity, yet he knew the shakti would not actually harm or damage anything or being. He did not know how he knew this; he simply knew. The phenomenon was akin to a great tunnel of shakti rushing towards them rather than them rushing through the tunnel. The intensity and epic nature of the shakti as well as the disconcerting effect of the shakti rushing at them with such ferocious velocity and power was what made the experience unbearable.

Yamadev alone remained standing, unmoved by the hurricane of brahman light. After all, he was a deva. Yet even he looked downwards, unwilling to stare directly at the effulgence, or perhaps simply showing humility before the force that made up and worked the universe itself, showing respect. He saw Rama looking towards him and made an infinitesimal movement of acknowledgement. Rama heard his voice within his head and knew that Sita and Hanuman did so too.

This is the Shockwave. It has been triggered in the distant future, yet its power ripples back through time itself, altering the course of history past, present and future. Such is Ravana’s genius that he planned his attack on an eleven-dimensional front, choosing the perfect time to launch it, a time when you would never suspect such an attack, let alone anticipate it. Once the Shockwave ends, he shall demonstrate his plan. For he is as vain as he is brilliant, and that vanity shall be his undoing. He desires to show Rama and Sita – as well as Atikaya, Valmiki and the frozen multitudes of Ayodhya in that world we were viewing through the Vortal – how spectacular his plan, how magnificent his artifice, how epic his vengeance. But he does not know that you are watching. Not merely one of countless Ramas and Sitas in countless worlds, but the actual amsas of Vishnu and Lakshmi. Unbeknownst to him, he has in fact been speaking to mere hollow puppets thus far, believing them to be the real amsas. And this duplicity was of course achieved by the aid of your old and dear friend and deva…

Shiva. Yes, I thought as much,
Rama said in his mindspace.
For Lord Rudra is not a fool to be taken in and used by anyone, least of all a rakshasa as devious and duplicitous as Ravana. He would know he was being used and he must have played along in order to keep Ravana from realizing the truth, that the Rama and Sita in the world he entered through the Vortal were not the real amsas at all.

Precisely. For while there can be infinite worlds accessible through the Vortal, there can only be one of each deva, and by extension, one amsa or avatar of each deva in the mortal realm at any given time. It is the law of Balance, as I explained earlier. As you may be aware, I too serve Lord Shiva, for while I have no immediate superior, being master of Death and Dharma and sufficient unto myself, yet ultimately Death too is but one aspect of and therefore subservient to the natural law of Entropy. And Shiva is Entropy Personified. Lord of Destruction – Destruction in all its myriad forms. And so I appealed to my Lord Shiva to deliberately mislead Ravana and play along, pretending that the Rama and Sita of that world were in fact the real amsas.

And they in turn played along as well, but they did so innocently, unaware that they are only simulacra of us, mirror reflections in an alternate world, not the real Rama and Sita at all.

Yes. That too was my Lord Shiva’s doing. He fed them that delusion using his infinite powers.

And Ravana was taken in as well, thinking that all Shiva did was make them aware of their divinity.

Exactly. Because while any amsa or avatar may not be aware of its own divine origin all its life, yet when confronted by a deva or devi and called by one’s true name, all awareness and recollection floods back, and one remembers everything. It is the only way an avatar or amsa can be ‘unlocked’. So Ravana thought that Shiva was unlocking that Rama and Sita and that they were then recalling their true natures as lord and lady of Vaikunta while in fact they were being duped just as Ravana was. In fact, while any deva or devi might unlock most avatars, in your and Lakshmi-devi’s case, a special rule was created.

Yes, and that rule said that you alone of all the devas would be the one to unlock us. For you are Lord of Dharma by which I live my life in this mortal avatar, and Lord of Death as well, because we were never to be made aware of our divinity until the time of our death was nigh. Only you, Yama, my old friend, not Shiva, not Brahma, not anyone else.

Indeed. This is why we know that you are truly Vishnu-avatar and Sita is Lakshmi-avatar. For I would not be here otherwise. But Ravana was never aware of this and assumed that any deva would be able to unlock the amsas, hence we were able to dupe him effectively. He truly believes that he is now showing the real Vishnu and Lakshmi his great epic plan…

A terrible rending sound began, like a great iron thing coming to a halt. Rama sensed the tunnel-like onrush of brahman shakti was finally coming to an end and braced himself. The Shockwave of the Vortal was about to end, and the real vengeance of Ravana about to unfold.

THIRTEEN

“BEHOLD JUDGEMENT DAY!”

Ravana’s great baritone, echoed tenfold by all his heads, rumbled and rolled like thunder across the world. Not across Ayodhya. For Ayodhya was gone. And in its place had come a terrible mind-rending vista such as no mortal had ever witnessed before, or even dreamed of in their wildest visions.