RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (44 page)

SIX

The ashrama of Maharishi Valmiki was peaceful and quiet in the yellowing light of dusk. The red ochre robes of the rishis and senior brahmacharyas stood out in clear relief against the rich green darbha grass nourished by the recent rains, while the white dhotis of the younger acolytes caught the fading light and seemed to glow as if illuminated. The sky above the hermitage clearing was purple broken by clusters of gold-tinged clouds that clung to the last light of the descended sun. Brahmins went about their evening chores, their clean faces and hands testifying to their recent completion of sandhyavandana in the nearby Tamasa river. 

Most of the rishis and brahmacharyas deftly avoided crossing paths with or coming face to face with Nakhudi. Even though she too was clad in the faded yet still serviceable rust-brown garb of a sadhini, a female hermit on the same spiritual path as they, the ashramites still seemed to prefer to give her a wide berth. She barely noticed, striding across the center of the ashrama directly towards the thatched mud hut on the extreme North Eastern corner, set sufficient distance away from the remaining structures to afford the ashramites a modicum of privacy from the only unattached female resident who inhabited it, yet close enough that the hut was not entirely separated from the ashrama. 

The soft questioning voices of the curious acolytes fell away behind Nakhudi as she turned down the short path that led to Vedavati’s hut, nestled in a small cluster of sala trees. She did not need to turn to see if Luv and Kush followed her. This was their home. Where else would they go? Besides, it was Vedavati she had to speak to urgently. Kali grant there is still time to set this right, she prayed silently, even as a sinking sensation in the pit of her belly told her that it was already too late. The damage was done, and quite likely the price would have to be paid when the time came. But they’re just boys, she thought, just boys doing what they thought was the right thing to do in a wrong time. Surely they would be punished too harshly for not realizing what they might be getting themselves into? Yes, said the voice inside her head, but you knew what they were doing and could have stopped them. It need never have come to this. 

She ground her teeth in frustration and stopped at the doorway of the hut. Like all huts in all ashramas, it had no door to speak of, merely a curtain of jute hanging across the open entranceway. She parted the curtain with her hand, swatting it aside, and peered inside. Nobody home. Well, Vedavati must be around somewhere. She would have been expecting the boys home in time for sandhyavandana. Nakhudi remembered belatedly that she had forgotten to stop and ensure that the boys underwent their evening ablutions as required by ashrama rules. She had had bigger things in mind than rituals. 

She looked around, uncertain. Where could Vedavati have gone at such a time? 

“By the river,” Luv said from behind. 

Nakhudi turned away from the entrance, allowing the jute cloth to fall back into place. She looked in the direction the twins were staring and saw Vedavati coming up the path from the river, an earthern pot balanced on her hip. Looking at her erstwhile mistress’s roughcloth robe, matted hair, and subdued aspect, not to mention the lines of age showing on her face, the charcoal-grey streaks in her hair, and the weariness in her eyes, Nakhudi felt a deep pang of sadness. Had she not known all that had transpired those ten long years ago, she might have been persuaded into believing that Sita was still in exile, the same exile in which she had been ten years ago, before the events that led her and then Rama to Lanka and altered their lives forever. 

His exile ended, her’s goes on. For how long, my Devi? Is this always woman’s lot? To suffer in silence while men live their lives in boisterous vitality? She carries a mud pot filled with water she drew herself from the river at dusk, back to a thatched hut where she sleeps on a straw pallet and eats falahar the year round, while he sleeps and sits on satin sheets, is attended by thousands, and drinks the wine of the devas, precious soma, from golden goblets if it pleases his fancy? How can life be so unjust? Is this dharma? If so, it is man’s dharma, not woman’s dharma. 

Vedavati was aware of their presence yet did not overly react. She approached quietly, greeting her sons with a knowing look, and Nakhudi with a wisp of a smile. “Sister,” she said, before going into her humble domicile. Nakhudi decided to follow her inside, in an effort to keep their dialogue as private as possible for the moment. First she glanced sharply at the boys and pointed to the tiny patch of mud before the threshold. “Sweep that,” she said, and went in. 

Vedavati was carefully setting down the brimming pot in a shaded corner. She picked up a piece of the mineralized phitkari stone that every ashramite used, dipped it carefully into the water, stirring slowly for several moments, in widening circles. Nakhudi waited with growing impatience. The phitkari stone sterilized the water and separated any pollutants, dispersing them to the bottom of the vessel. Vedavati finished the sterilization, put the stone carefully beside the pot, and covered the mouth of the pot with a fresh clean papaya leaf. Vedavati emptied, washed and replenished the drinking water pot daily, replacing the leaf everyday as well. Nakhudi couldn’t remember if she had done the same last week or last month! As always she was humbled and moved by how clean and sweet-smelling Vedavati managed to keep this humble domicile. Yet the simplicity of the dwelling shamed her, Nakhudi, who had herself occupied better quarters back when she had been Sita’s bodyguard and captain of her personal queensguard back in Mithila two and a half decades ago. It was humiliating to see her former princess living here, like some common sadhini. No, not a princess anymore, she reminded herself, a queen! A queen-mother, no less. Maatr to the heirs of the greatest Arya nation. 

Nakhudi shook her head once more in disgust and outrage: Men! At the same time, she felt pride at how well Sita upheld her own dignity through this utterly simple yet immaculate existence. Truly, she was no less than a living embodiment of Devi herself. Even the name given to her by Maharishi Valmiki was an appropriate one: Vedavati. Nakhudi had heard it said around the ashram, always with a reverential awed tone, that Kush and Luv’s Maatr was better versed in the Vedas than any other woman alive. 

Dusk had turned to darkness by the time Vedavati was done with her evening chores. The boys had finished cleaning the outside threshold, aangan and surroundings, and had even lit the house lamp that hung by the door of the hut but they still remained outside. No doubt to  avoid chancing their mother’s wrath as long as possible. The lamp’s yellow glow provided sufficient light to illuminate Nakhudi and her longtime friend and mistress within the hut, though it also reminded her depressingly of the day-bright illumination that had lit up the glittering luxury and gleaming beauty of Maharaja Janak’s palace in those days of yore. From light to darkness, they had come a long way from home, Nakhudi thought not without some bitterness. Her former mistress broke into her thoughts. 

“What have they been upto this time?” Sita asked matter-of-factly, without preamble. 

Nakhudi told her. 

Even in the dim light and flickering reflections, she saw Sita blanch. She felt awful at bringing such news. But it was better than Sita not knowing. 

“This will have consequences,” she finished at last, spreading her calloused palms on her meaty thighs. She waited for Sita’s response. 

The exiled queen of sighed. “Ayodhya again.” She looked up at Nakhudi with a puzzled smile twisting her mouth. “Did it have to be Ayodhya, of all places? Why not some other nation? Why only Ayodhya!”

Nakhudi shrugged, knowing better than to answer that one aloud. Silently, she thought: Because your karma is eternally intertwined with His, that’s why, my lady. 

SEVEN

Sita stood looking into the back of the wagon for a long time. So long that the boys grew nervous and fidgety and began shuffling from foot to foot, then hopping, then holding hands and doing a kind of jig, wholly involuntary and instinctive, until Nakhudi turned and gave them the full benefit of one of her formidable glares, which stopped them short. They stood with slumped shoulders then, though the overly beatific expressions on their faces suggested more than a touch of mock innocence. What? We? Never! She controlled the urge to cuff them on their backs, knowing it would only make them whoop and cough with pretended pain, while actually laughing. They were boys after all, though when watching them in a pitched fight, it was hard to remember that. She was certain their opponents didn’t care, which only made their exploits that much more dangerous. Only a matter of time, she thought in dismay, before they meet their match. Maate protect them both. 

Finally, Sita let the burlap flap drop and turned away. She put her fists on her hips and looked at the boys. Their innocent wide-eyed expressions deepened to the point of self-parody. 

“Well,” Vedavati said at last. “This time you’ve really gone and done it, you two.”

“We were just—”

“Shut up.”

“—taking back—”

“Be quiet.”

“—rightfully our’s!”

“Hold your tongues!”

“We thought it was—”

“Silence, you scamps!”

“—another vaisya grama with grains—”

“I said—”

“—need food desperately, they’re near-starvation and—”

“Enough!” Vedavati’s voice cracked like a whip, making even Nakhudi wince. 

The boys held their tongues this time. 

Their mother moved closer, facing them directly, hands crossed firmly across her chest now. Nakhudi saw from the faint flush lightening Sita’s neck and lower face that she was really upset this time. It took a lot to upset Sita. She swallowed, wishing she could slip away and leave mother and sons to sort out the matter on their own. She was dreading the moment when Vedavati would realize that Nakhudi had known about the boys’ antics from the time of the very first waylaying. She glanced around, glad that the boys had been wise enough to hide the stolen wagon in this remote hollow deep in the woods, where there was nobody to see and hear. She had not even been able to bring herself to think about the consequences that awaited them once the survivors of the waylaying reached Ayodhya and reported to their superiors there. Sita brought up that very issue just then. 

“Do you know what you have done?” Vedavati asked her sons, the colour rising in her face for the first time in weeks that Nakhudi had seen. “You have transgressed against the authority of Ayodhya! Do you even understand what that means?”

The boys looked up at their Maatr, their big-eyed innocent expressions slowly fading as they saw just how angry she was, and how much effort she was putting into controlling that anger. They also saw what Nakhudi saw, that she had already flashed past her ire at the boys for their youthful waywardness to the larger issue at hand, and that observation deflated any further attempt to appeal to her maternal affections. “Nakhudi explained it to us,” Kush said, looking down with his head tilted awkwardly, as young boys will do when they are discomfited. “We broke the law, she says. But we didn’t know that. We thought were just taking back what was the people’s. Honest, Maatr!”

“Yes, Maatr!” Luv chipped in, looking as disconcerted as his twin. 

Vedavati glared at them both in turn, showing them what she thought about their understanding and misinterpretation of the law. But aloud she said: “They won’t let this rest. That’s for sure.” She frowned, thinking. “You say you waylaid this grama just this morning?”

Both nodded vigorously. 

Sita looked up at the rock walls of the hollow, turning around slowly as she thought for a moment. The torch in Nakhudi’s hand threw flickering yellow light up several yards, illuminating the overhanging broken rock walls that leaned together to produce the empty cave-like hollow where the boys had brought the wagon. The hollow was at the rear of the very outcrop near which the boys had stopped and robbed the wagon grama, although one had to know it was there or one would never find it easily, even though it was literally within stone’s throw of the raj-marg itself. The choice of hiding place was as ingenious as everything else the twins ever did, but Nakhudi doubted that would help them much if what Sita feared came to pass. 

“That means they ought to reach Ayodhya in three days, maybe even two if they travel fast.” She flashed them angry looks, the torchlight reflecting in her dark eyes and giving her a unmotherlike aspect. “But more likely they would have sent a rider ahead to give Ayodhya the news of the waylaying. In which case, he would reach Ayodhya before nightfall tomorrow.” She mumbled something incoherent that Nakhudi was sure was a curse. “Doesn’t give us much time.”

“Much time for what, Maatr?” Luv asked in some puzzlement. Nakhudi glanced at them both, the torch sending their shadows fleeing as she turned it towards them. Both boys looked more concerned about their mother’s stress than any anger she might display towards them. They still don’t fully understand the implications of what they’ve done. 

Sita looked at them and shook her head in disgust as she came to the same conclusion. She sighed and said, “To try to make amends.”

Kush looked at his brother. “How, Maatr?”

Sita gestured at the wagon. “Only one way that I can think of now. Unless you have a better idea?” This last she tossed at Nakhudi, who shrugged, then shook her head. Sita nodded, and raised her hands in the universal gesture of despair. “Then, there’s only one thing we can do to try and make amends. We have to give this back. At once. That means taking this wagon back to Ayodhya and delivering it to them with a full apology for your actions.”

Kush and Luv stared at their mother as if she had suddenly sprouted a second head and spoken in voices. “What?” they said at exactly the same time, in the exact same tone of shocked outrage. 

Sita looked at them both with her hands on her hips. “Well, smarty boys, what would you have us do then?”

Luv shrugged. Kush imitated him. “Why not just keep it?” 

Sita raised her eyebrows at them, then turned to Nakhudi. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that, right, Nakhudi? Why not just…keep it!” She laughed a semi-hysterical laugh that echoed oddly in the enclosed rock hollow. Nakhudi glanced around nervously. She didn’t like being in a place like this, with only one ingress, in the jungle at night. Even the military gramas avoided passing through this neck of the woods at night. Panthers, boars, lions, wolf packs, snakes, you could take your pick of predators on the prowl. The Valmiki ashramites knew better than to  venture even to the edges of the light-pools thrown by the ashram lanterns at night – and despite their extreme caution there were always incidents. She hoped Sita would keep her voice down to avoid attracting undue animal attention.  

Sita shook her head in despair, walking several steps to and fro before turning to say to the boys: “Do you know what you stole today? Do you even understand?” She went up to the back of the wagon, hopped up on the rear steps, and twitched the flap open with a single flick of her wrist, sending the flap over the top of the wagon where it fell with a heavy rustling sound. Nakhudi hefted the mashaal, raising it up to throw some light into the back of the wagon. Standing that way, her feet slightly apart, one arm raised with the torch in hand, reminded her vaguely of a statue she had seen somewhere in her many travels that was sculpted in an identical pose. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember where or when. Then again, perhaps she was only wistfully wishing someone would sculpt her in this pose. Yes, sure, she thought sarcastically, the great lady with the upraised torch, casting light upon the ill-gotten gains of theft and brigandry!

“This,” Sita said, gesturing at the wagon filled with massive chests thrown open earlier by Sita herself when examining the contents, “is a war wagon.” The treasure within the chests – for it was nothing less than a treasure – glittered, gleamed and shone as the gold ingots, silver bars, coins, gems, and other precious items caught and refracted the light from Nakhudi’s torch. “Tribute collected to finance Ayodhya’s next war.” 

Nakhudi nodded in agreement: she knew enough about the inner workings of a kingdom to recognize a war chest when she saw one. This was no mere tithe, lagaan or other kind of tax; only a royal tribute could be this rich. And protected as it was by such a heavily armed contingent of PFs, Ayodhya’s elite regiment of royal guards, a war wagon was the only likelihood that presented itself. Literally a wagonload of wealth to be used to pay for a major military offensive. Which begged the question: What war was Ayodhya planning to wage? Against whom? When? Nakhudi had no answers to such questions. Hell. She didn’t even want to know the answers. She wished fervently now as she had that morning when the boys first brought her here to show her their rich pickings, that she had never laid eyes on that goddamned wagon. 

Sita turned back to glare at her sons, black pupils flashing darkly in the torchlight. “The penalty for stealing a war wagon belonging to Ayodhya is not mere imprisonment or a penalty. It is death to one’s entire family, on grounds of treason.”

Nakhudi watched the boys faces lose every last vestige of youthful brashness as the full implications of Sita’s word sank in. She felt sorry for them in that moment. This time, they had truly bitten off more than they – or anyone else – could chew. They had just sentenced themselves and their Maatr to certain death. Now, no matter what any of them did next, their crime was beyond forgiving. Except…and Nakhudi drew in a deep breath, the arm holding the upraised mashaal shaking slightly…except by a king’s pardon. And that, she thought, looking at the sons of Sita as they absorbed the crushing blow of the implications of their boyish transgression, was as unlikely as the moon lighting up the world with light as bright as sunshine.