Sita's Ascent (10 page)

‘“I looked at her.
She was the prize, that Sita. Worst of all, did you see the way she looked at him?
That fellow with hardly any hair on his chest whom they call a man? Her every breath
held tight in her breast so that he would breathe life into her. That was love. How
dare he steal her heart? Her heart that would have been mine. I cannot bear
it!”

‘For the first time I saw how
desire was the single thread that held human and rakshasa together. How great its
fire was, how the breath of life fanned it, how the rains could never drench it and
the desert sun could not scorch it. I saw how like dry wood it was kindled with just
one look, and here, for my brother, it was taking an unfathomable direction. He
wanted to drink her in and, more importantly, be drunk by her. He was on dangerous
territory. He wanted the one thing all of us rakshasas found
unspeakable—love. Love in the human heart turns divine. Total surrender!
Unspeakable treachery!

‘For the first time in all my
lives I saw how crushed Ravana was by a woman, named Sita.’

The minty smell combined with a citrus
oil and its tingling sensation made his skin crawl back to life. Then he felt the
gentle warmth of a soft, furrowed palm whisking around his face, yet barely touching
his fragile skin. Lakshmana lay limp as his legs were crushed under the weight of
the chariot’s axle. That is all he saw in his mind’s eye.
Tumbling. Horses, manes, reins. Tumbling in an eternal waterfall. His breath falling
after them as he fell in slow motion; like a trapeze artist defying gravity he gave
a martial leap in the air before the earth drew him. He did not try to break his
fall. The chariot did, as it dismantled when he rode off the track in furious speed,
fighting the heart in his throat and the blood and tears blinding his eyes.

That was some years ago. But to him it
was a minute ago. After years of a death-sleep, his skin now began to awaken. His
eyes did not open. But the palm that stroked the air around his skin brought back an
unforgettable memory.

The sound of
Om
Namo
hovering around him like a bee single-mindedly approaching a flower
also reminded Lakshmana of another time. He could hear the clashing and bashing of
clubs and thighs as he recalled that time. It came back vividly with the sound of
splitting skulls and screeching monkeys while vultures and other birds of prey
picked the long braids of intestines oozing like sticky red thread out of the
wounded. He could see all this now with his eyes closed. But he had once seen it
with his eyes open. He was on a battlefield. It was difficult to see and he was
losing blood and breath. In that fetid air he came under an enormous shadow that
blocked the sun. It wasn’t a cloud. All the monkeys were gnashing their
teeth in terror, until they were engulfed by the shadow of a tail whisking in the
air. A few minutes after the shadow passed over the battlefield, there was a giant
thud followed by what felt like an earthquake. Once more, the hooting and hollering
from the armies of the bears and the monkeys started. Lakshmana was paralysed and
could only hear: HAN-U-MAN, HAN-U-MAN, HAN-U-MAN. He could feel the heavy footsteps
and the thumping tail. Hanuman had
brought the mountain with the
sanjeevini herb. The minty smell mixed with the citrus oil on the gently furrowed
palm of the hand wafted into his nostrils and he felt the occasional brush of fur.
Was this from a memory or was it in the present?

Lakshmana opened his battered eyes. It
wasn’t the past, it wasn’t a dream. ‘It was, it is,
Hanuman,’ he heard in his head. He could only let out a grunt that was
stifled by the pain radiating from his bruised and blistered skin. Hanuman looked
back at him the way gorillas gaze into the near distance—understanding
human reactions, but not necessarily giving the expected responses. His eyes were
red and his breathing was almost still as he gently placed his hairy ear close to
Lakshmana’s chest. Hanuman could hear the broken ribs, sounding like
pebbles grating when they are dragged from the shore into the sea.
Lakshmana’s moans indicated a new language. Hanuman listened to the story
bubbling and bursting through Lakshmana, who had words flowing within him that could
only come out as crushed sounds.

‘I can see now how I arrived
here. No, not the way my body is crushed. That was only an accident. But what led to
it. It is also the way we first met you, Hanuman.

‘In Panchavati, in that last
stage of our exile. I was busy sharpening my arrows up on the tree watchtower when I
heard a commotion down below. I was wondering how I
could have
let this happen. I had actually fallen off to sleep and was dreaming I was
sharpening my arrows! I prayed to Nidra, the goddess of sleep, and begged her not to
visit me so often. I was on a mission; at any time of day we could be attacked so I
needed to be fresh and alert. Just at that moment I heard Rama say: “But,
dear lady, my brother Lakshmana has been alone all these years. Why not ask
him?” And so, Soorpanakka, in a bewitching form with plaited hair down to
her waist, threaded with jasmines and gems, swayed seductively towards me. I knew
something was afoot, so grabbing my sword I leapt down. She looked at me and said,
“Look I can offer you anything: armies, navies, elephants, gold beyond
your dreams and desire. It’s not really you I have come after. But at
least if I am married to you, I will make it a family affair!” She winked.
“That’s enough. I know you are a rakshasa and I command you to
leave this place at once,” I said, “or else.”

‘“Or else
what?” was her taunting reply, and she came closer. Her body swayed, she
was nearly pressed against me. I remember the touch. I could smell the perfume of
the jasmines, and the next instant when she opened her mouth it was the stench of
stale fish. She taunted me with the fact that I knew she was a rakshasa but was
being chivalrous to her in her acquired shape as a woman. When I looked at Rama, he
was smiling mischievously at Sita and they seemed unaware of what Soorpanakka was
saying to me. She had cast her spell. Desire was welling up in
her eyes; I was just another conquest. She knew I knew so she shifted strategy.

‘“Even if you did
not notice me, I was there at the swayamvara. I longed for you. You, who are so
strong and silent, and yet always put yourself down for your brother. That chit of a
girl you were forced to marry …”

‘“That’s
enough! Urmilla is my wife. Be grateful to her that I’ve put up with you
for so long—I could never strike a woman, thanks to her!” I was
being drawn into a web of useless words. She had clamped me with an unseen power
that felt like a crocodile’s grip.

‘“Well, if you love
your brother and that wife of his so much then steel yourself and listen to some
truths. Kaikeyi is not to blame for this exile. It is your father who seems to have
forgotten his word of honour.”

‘I was enraged that she
brought my father into this taunt. She could measure my temper when I snapped
“How dare you!”

‘“Oh! Your
ridiculous threats. Dare? Dare? Has your wife ever dared anything? Well, I dare your
honour to hear a few unsavoury facts. Kaikeyi was beautiful and young. Your father,
after having married Kausalya, went on one of his campaigns to prove how powerful he
still was even if he could not have a child. Of course, when he saw Kaikeyi, the
daughter of King Keykeya, Dasaratha
was constantly aroused by
her bewitching beauty. Keykeya’s neighbouring kingdom was becoming a
threat to Kaikeyi’s father, so Dasaratha decided to wage war to show his
loyalty in the hope of winning Kaikeyi for himself. Kaikeyi, so desperately in love,
in spite of herself, drove your father’s chariot into battle against
Keykeya’s enemy. No one wishes to reveal the story of the time when one of
the wheels of Dasaratha’s chariot got stuck in the mud. Kaikeyi, his
charioteer, held the chariot with her back and by propping it up against a rock.
Your father, Dasaratha, then in face-to-face combat, slit his enemy’s
throat. When the battle ended and he was victorious, Dasaratha swept Kaikeyi off her
feet and held her face with his bloodied hands, drew her into his arms and kissed
her until she agreed to marry him. King Keykeya got your father to sign and seal a
scroll where he agreed to make Kaikeyi’s child the heir to the
throne.”

‘It was all so surreal. Rama
and Sita, though within earshot, couldn’t hear any of this, and there was
I, being fed a story that turned the soil of all the relationships by which I felt
rooted. Yet, there was something compelling about Soorpanakka and what she told me.
I wondered what was the moral ground on which Rama and all of us stood? It was
subject to the story that we had been told by our father. And here we were, giving
our youth, our lives, to honour his word. And from what I was being told, the
word was false. So what was different between us and the
rakshasas? They believed in their untruths; there was a kind of honesty about it.
And here we had been fed myths about righteousness; I felt so much for Bharata. How
I had doubted him. And there was my Urmilla caught up in this churning ocean of life
because of my belief in honour. Sita too. But at least Sita’s choice to
accompany him was accepted by Rama. I had rebuked Urmilla for even suggesting that
she wanted to be beside me in exile, telling her she would be a liability in the
forest. I felt nauseous. I don’t know what possessed me. I felt the blood
rising and throbbing in my temples. All I heard Soorpanakka say was: “Or
else?”

‘That was like the sound of
the conch for commencing battle. I flew into such a rage that I raised the sword and
chopped off her nose and ears. The hideous attack made her flee. She had not
imagined I would do it. Neither had I. I had been provoked. I wonder whether it was
to avenge my feeling of betrayal. I felt betrayed by my father who had made me doubt
my brother Bharata and everything I had been certain about till that moment. Sensing
the danger of the effect it could have on Rama, on Sita, as we had sacrificed our
youth to honour our father’s word, I panicked and lashed out. It was only
then that Rama and Sita looked. They looked with horror. What they saw was so
different from how I saw it because they did not
hear what I
did. Did I have the additional responsibility of keeping quiet about it? And now,
the final sting—Rama’s remark about me being lonely all these
years without Urmilla in the forest! Sita was shocked and sick at the sight of the
fleeing Soorpanakka. Rama knelt, holding Sita’s head as she crouched on
the ground.

‘That was when I saw the
goddess of sleep, Nidra, approaching. My lids were heavy, and she looked so
comforting with her wide lap. I commanded her to stop in her tracks. I had to be
more alert from now on. I knew Soorpanakka’s encounter with me would be
followed by more skirmishes in the Panchavati forest. Nidra was, after all,
fulfilling her role. What would we be if we did not sleep? I then begged her to put
Urmilla to sleep until my return. But Nidra would charge a fee for granting my wish.
So she made me accept she would return to me when she thought it fit. I bargained.
She could not visit me while we were in the final stage of exile. She protested that
it would be so unnatural. All the goddesses of health would blame her. Finally, she
gave in to my request of visiting me after Rama had returned to Ayodhya and been
crowned king.

‘When you have a stomach ache
you try to remember what you have eaten; every problem has an origin. I kept telling
myself to be alert and not let Soorpanakka slip past me again.

‘Then came the golden deer and
Sita was transfixed and insistent on Rama going after it. I have thought many times
of that crocodile-like grip of Soorpanakka when she had taunted me. Was it the same
kind of spell under which Sita had fallen? But when she heard the cry that she
believed was Rama’s, she became her former self. For one moment I saw her
so vulnerable and completely subsumed by her concern for Rama. She had forgotten the
dangers of the forest and cared nothing for herself. She begged me to go, and, just
as I came towards her, visibly moved by her love for my brother, she launched an
attack: “My beloved is dying and all you can do is stand here with your
arms folded in resignation while you sweet-talk me about the great exploits of your
brother Rama? Yes, he may have killed Tataka and lifted Shiva’s bow, but
now his life is in danger and you are delaying rescuing him? What’s the
matter with you? Is this the time you have been waiting for to show your real
intention towards me?” Her words struck me worse than poisoned darts. I
had never seen her eyes flash fire and her mouth utter such filth. Did she say that
to provoke me? I drew the lakshman rekha around her to protect her and ran in the
direction Rama had taken in pursuit of that fateful golden deer.

‘After all that happened and
we returned to Ayodhya, it was a few months into the reign of Rama. We were all at
court. Sugriva had come to visit; Vibhishana was also
there. I
was gazing on the scene when the court poets were singing of Rama’s glory.
Suddenly I felt my eyelids grow very heavy. I saw her—Nidra. She smiled. I
nodded. I had forgotten what she looked like or, indeed, who she was. It had been
nearly two and a half years since we had made that bargain. She did as promised.
But, of course, in her unique way, she came unannounced. To visit me, in style, at
court. I felt as if I had lost all control over my body and its senses. It was a
dizzy and warm feeling. Almost like being happily inebriated. I was listening to the
songs of praise recounting the bravery of the human race and the greatness of man
and civilization. I started to smile. My muscles were relaxing. Years of constant
vigil and staying awake began to fly away and with it, the tension. I laughed and
put my hand to my mouth. The laughter started taking over. I couldn’t
suppress it any longer behind my cupped hand. I laughed out loud. It was an
unbelievable force that took over and I was deliriously happy. There were murmurs
and sounds of shuffling. At first the singers, who were also great Wits, felt
complimented. They interpreted my laughter as attentive listening to their puns,
conundrums and nuances. But I wasn’t laughing on cue. So they started to
look at each other, stumbling over their lines and faltering, and shied away into
finishing the recitation as soon as was possible. I tried to explain, but no words
would come out, only rippling laughter.