Sita's Ascent (7 page)

As it was hidden amidst the banana
trees, he decided to leave the bow there while he went away and thought about the
best way to show his gratitude to Shiva. He did not want to endanger his kingdom by
revealing to Mithila’s neighbours the huge iron bow and what it could
signal: capability of war.

His queen had cooked him a simple and
satisfying meal. Just as Janaka finished and went to the inner courtyard to wash his
hands and rinse his mouth, he could see straight through the doorway. What did he
see? Sita looking up at the bow. She was in one of her clearing-up-the-garden moods.
She had her arms akimbo and her head tilted to fathom the actual size of the bow
underground from its height above ground. Then in a flash, Janaka saw his
fifteen-year-old Sita lunge for the bow at its widest arc and, with both her hands,
pull it out and fling it away. ‘Yes! Take that!’ she shouted
gleefully, dusting her hands
matter-of-factly.
‘That’ll teach you to wedge into the roots of these fruit trees!
What a mess this is.’ And she began levelling the yawning hole in the
ground with the rubble around it.

Janaka was awestruck. That was
Shiva’s bow Sita had just plucked out and chucked like some soft, rotting
plant! Throughout lunch he had been calculating how many men he would have to get to
dig that bow out of the ground to then heave it on to a chariot and carry it back to
Mithila. ‘Oh, it doesn’t bear thinking,’ he said to
himself. Then something dawned on him. ‘Sita! Even she is not aware how
extraordinary she is.’ That beam of light in her eyes, the fire in her
soul, were all signs of how blessed he and his wife were to have her as their
daughter. He thought it best not to say anything either to his wife or to
Urmilla.

Two weeks passed. Spring was in the air
and bullock horns were painted with vermilion and turmeric, strung with flowers,
bells and streamers. It was time to return to court for the royal festivities
marking the birth of a new season.

Janaka, his wife and Sita, with her
favourite Urmilla, were returning in the royal chariot. They were often accompanied
by the female storyteller who knew a thing or two about the different villages and
towns they passed en route to Mithila. Somehow, she always got wind of the latest
news, and this was Janaka’s best way of keeping up
with what had happened while he had been away from court.

A female storyteller never just reports
facts; she adds wonderful emotional twists and turns to events, and gives insightful
details about the people she meets. Urmilla and Sita were listening to the latest
news about two young men from the Kosala kingdom who had entered the Dandaka forest
accompanied by Vishwamitra. ‘Do you know what they saw?’ The
storyteller’s eyes widened as she could see it clearly in her
mind’s eye. ‘They came upon a large, black rock. One of the
young men, being curious as young men are, was examining this strange stone. His toe
grazed its base. And, suddenly, it burst into a soft flame, and a woman emerged from
it. Her name was Ahalya. She was so radiant, had always been a real beauty. You know
what her name means?’ Without waiting for a response from the royals, she
continued, ‘The one in whom there is no imperfection.’

‘I cannot even imagine
it,’ said Urmilla excitedly.

‘You mean it is even greater
than being just perfect?’ demanded Sita indignantly.

‘Now that’s
something for you two to live up to,’ said the queen with a warm
laugh.

‘So, what happened?’
asked Janaka, as he wanted to find out about the two young men, while masking his
concern for his kingdom’s safety.

The storyteller continued cheerfully,
impervious to these lively interruptions:

‘It was long before my
mother’s, mother’s grandmother’s great
aunt’s time that if any woman’s beauty was compared to
Ahalya’s, all the neighbours would “tut, tut”. It
wasn’t just her beauty, it was her nature that was beyond comparison.

‘She was a caring woman. She
loved her husband who was many, many, many years older than her. He was a great
philosopher of his time. There they both were, in the forest, in a little hermitage.
He used to wake early and go off to meditate and she would make the place spotless
by the time he returned.

‘When the devas watched over
the couple, they couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be close
to her. Finally Indra, the chieftain of the devas, could hold back no longer. He
thought of Ahalya night and day, and day and night. All the courtesans of Devaloka
grew ferociously jealous of an earthly woman holding sway over a deva, and that too
over Indra. They taunted him. He found this a good excuse to come down to earth and
prove what a powerful deva he really was; that no one could stand in the way of such
striking godliness. But as the deva who held the thunderbolt and struck lightning,
he decided not to descend to earth so dramatically. It would scare everyone off. He
knew the only way he could come into Ahalya’s
presence
was if he were someone else.

‘So, Indra waited for the
husband to leave the hermitage. Then, transforming himself into the
husband’s double, Indra approached Ahalya. Well … Indra seized
the moment when Ahalya was alone. She had never felt the kind of desire that swept
through her like a forest fire. For the first time she sensed something other than
the desire to serve. It rushed through her body to see her husband, standing before
her, seducing her. And so … she gave herself as she took him like the
current of a river speeds the course of a boat. The current was swift and raging,
and the banks along the river dissolved into the water. Ahalya had never thought of
love. The joy of being, desire, being desired, giving and taking had unravelled for
her the secrets of the dark of a woman’s body. And then, her husband
returned to the hermitage to fetch the jar of water that he had left behind. He saw
the couple in the throes of pleasure …’

‘Then what
happened?’ asked the queen, genuinely startled by the turn of events in
the story.

‘When Ahalya’s
husband appeared, however great a sage or thinker he may have been, reflecting on
grand things like immortality, the nature of life and death
…’

‘Go on, go on,’
urged Janaka.

‘He cursed both his wife and
Indra. Ahalya was shocked both at being deceived and
“discovered” and
she protested. But her
husband would have none of it. In response to her protests, her husband uttered a
curse. She turned to stone and remained that way for many, many, many years. Her
husband did add a condition, though, even to the everlasting curse. That in the
future, a man who was fair and sympathetic to the unjustly accused and who saw only
the good in others would pass by. When he would touch the stone, the spell would be
broken and she would be free.’

‘And such a man entered
Dandaka just a few days ago?’ asked Sita, amazed.

‘Not only that, Your
Highness,’ said the chariot driver, ‘he has also put an end to
the terror in the forests by doing away with the wretched rakshasas, Tataka and
Subahu.’

‘Wonder of wonders!’
said Janaka; Sita added, rather thoughtfully: ‘And you say such a man is
on his way?’

Lava, Urmilla and Valmiki had now
fashioned the perfect handheld catapult. Urmilla had collected the gut strings from
carcasses in the forest on her earlier expeditions in search of herbs for her
ointments. She had created a strap that enabled the catapult to be elastic enough
for Lava’s small hands. Standing behind him, she held his hand, which
encircled a large reetha soap nut, with the gut string firmly wound around his left
thumb and index finger. The right pulled and released the reetha soap nut into space
with sufficient force, so that by its volition it struck the guava dangling from the
top branch. It hit the ground with a soft thud as the parrots fluttered out in a
trail, shrieking. It was Lava’s first conquest. He jumped with glee.
‘My, what a marksman you are, Lava! Be careful what you aim
for,’ Urmilla said, bursting with pride.

‘So, Lava, full marks on the
aim, timing, focusing on target and concentration. What we travelled across was
distance. That was a fruit. Tomorrow it could be an animal. All these have
life.’ What Valmiki wanted to add was ‘and one day it will be
your own thought that will propel your action; so heed your intention, dear Lava, as
the world will depend on it’, but the epic poet in him couldn’t
brave being so prosaic at a moment of such triumph in Lava’s animated
life.

Lava’s face furrowed.
‘What do you mean? We need to eat, and they are there for us,’
he said with indignant authority.

‘Spoken like a king, my dear,
mm … but not a wise and loving one,’ said Urmilla, reading
Valmiki’s disapproval.

‘Yes, but consider that the
fruit, birds, all creatures, this earth too, are generous in
giving—consciously or unconsciously. Let me tell you a story. When
I’ve finished, I want you to tell me what you can see inside your
mind’s eye as you are listening to it. Okay?’ Lava was all ears
with his chin cupped in his hands. He had stretched out, lying on his stomach on the
cool forest floor, gazing up at Valmiki who had entered the galaxy of his story. The
words from Valmiki’s voice flowed like a mist encircling his audience of
Lava, Urmilla and the inhabitants of the entire forest, from the minutest algae to
the mightiest carnivores. The afternoon heat began to dissolve as his voice took on
an even timbre, harmonizing with the sound of the rippling forest stream. But at any
relevant moment within the story, Valmiki could leap out of his skin with the force
of a tiger to ask a question about the here and now.

‘It was a time of change.
Change never happens suddenly, although it may seem so. Like a rock chipping away
from a boulder, hurtling towards a rapid river.

‘Sage Rishyasringa could see
the flames from the altar rising like a winged messenger from the belly of the earth
to the sky. At the auspicious hour of the ritual it was still dark. It had to be,
because the time that the gods watch over the world is 4 a.m. It is also the hour of
our deepest rest when the imagination and gods are at play. The sage could see the
flames like a cord of hope rising from human prayers to the gods in the heavens. At
that very moment the devas, or “shining ones”, were having a
conference and had gathered outside Brahma’s Assembly Hall. Devaloka is
made up of gods, or shining ones, and above them are the mahadevas, whom I call the
Greats—they are Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. At the time of the Ashwamedha,
as Rishyasringa watched the flames from the altar on earth reaching the heavens, or
Vaikunta, Vishnu was in a highly confidential discussion with Brahma. A new
situation had been created that was to spell the fate of the world.

‘After the Big Bang and the
creation of the universe, there was a time of famine and drought brought on by
neglect. Some of the gods turned into ferocious and ever-hungry creatures that
became ogres, monsters and demons known as asuras. In time, Ravana, the descendent
of an ogre, conquered all the other asuras. He then prayed fervently to Shiva for a
vardana, or boon. It was not a simple prayer of bending on a knee with folded hands
and making a special wish. Ravana had to do something spectacular. Only he could; he
was strong, skilful and brave and also deeply misunderstood, which made him very
lonely. He loved being noticed. So, he hung upside down from a tree over a fire and
thought of nothing and no one except Shiva for forty years. He wasn’t
noticed. He decided to climb down and see what he could do for the gods who were a
little worried about crossing the bridge of Devaloka into the human world, as a
serpent was threatening them. The gods didn’t want to get their hands,
silks, crowns and jewels dirty, so Ravana decided to help them and killed the
serpent. Finally, he had a vision of Shiva. Shiva the Great was delighted by his
penance and asked him what his wish was. Ravana replied, “I wish for
immortality. You know what I mean. Life, forever and beyond ever!”

‘Shiva simply said:
“Sorry, most-competent-of-all Asura, but you cannot have it. It is
reserved. Your labours and devotion to seek my attention are seriously impressive.
So, sorry. Some
can
have life everlasting, but
unfortunately you are not born to.”

‘Ravana would not return
disappointed. He huffed and he puffed as he stamped down on the big smoky coils of
his fury that were flying out like clouds of stinging mosquitoes. Then he asked the
Great Shiva if he could be made invincible against the gods, so that none could
injure or kill him. It seemed a fair deal. Shiva, always known for his generosity,
was pleased with what seemed like Ravana’s compromise and the wish was
granted.

‘Ravana was given the
beautiful island of Lanka to rule over. He ruled well, became terrifyingly powerful
and was a law unto himself. His arts of magic and cloning of the existing worlds
began to trouble the gods. And, thanks to Shiva, no one, not even Indra, the
chieftain of the devas and godfather of the heavens, could devise a strategy that
would keep Ravana in check. The fate of the heavens was at stake because Ravana was
beginning to invade peoples’ minds with dreams and illusions of power in
pursuit of personal gain harmful to others. This brought in its wake greed,
conquest, discontent and a disregard for humanity. It was the reversal of
aspiration, achievement and fulfilment—the profound ideals that are the
essence of being human. This was why the devas had gathered outside
Brahma’s Assembly Hall; they wanted to know what was the antidote to
Shiva’s boon of near immortality that had been granted to Ravana.

‘Down on earth, Rishyasringa
was placing sacred barks and twigs with pure ghee as oblation on the ritual fire,
while in Devaloka, Brahma waited breathlessly for Vishnu’s decision.

‘But Vishnu smiled charmingly
as he said, “You mean … Ravana is causing all this …
by himself?”

‘Brahma was embarrassed. He
coughed slightly. On earth, it caused rolling thunder in the sky. He knew what
Vishnu was implying. What were the devas doing, indulging in all the luxuries of
heaven, enjoying immortality and neglecting people, while one asura had such amazing
powers to destroy the universe? Brahma admitted to himself that it was time he made
cuts on some executive privileges and extravagant personal expenses of the devas.
“Well … er, hmmm …” was all he could say. On
earth everyone felt an earthquake.

‘Shiva had just entered the
Great Assembly Hall. He was frowning. Nandi, his wise old bull who accompanied him
everywhere, was fidgety and whisked his tail. It got entangled in Shiva’s
cascading locks of hair. “How many times do I have to tell you not to do
that?” Shiva said to Nandi. “Well, I think it’s time
you had a haircut and I think it’s time you took some responsibility for
all the mess the world is in!” was Nandi’s sharp reply.

‘“Order!
Order!” said Brahma. “What does it look like? The devas are
waiting for us to do something about Creation, Dasaratha is holding a yagna
sacrifice calling on the gods to give him and his three wives children, and we are
behaving like urchins fighting in the gutter over a tired allegation like a bone
spat out by a dog!”

‘“Are you all
blaming
me
?” asked Shiva, genuinely perplexed,
and glared at Nandi. “I had nothing to do with it. Ravana worked very hard
at contacting me. Not only that, he showed such promise. He’s bright,
hands-on and doesn’t leave the hard work for others to do. He has
spectacular ideas and he knows how to make them happen.”

‘“But
surely,” Nandi cut in, “you must screen
who
you grant boons to and give some thought to what
kind
of boons you grant?”

‘Vishnu was listening and,
with his mischievous crooked smile, said, “I remember how Ravana taunted
me in the last encounter.” “Yes,” Shiva said eagerly,
having found an ally, “that’s right Vishnu, you tell them. When
Ravana was in the form of Nandaka and got a little out of hand about the immortality
business, I did try to burn him with my third eye, didn’t I? Just tell
them.”

‘“Yes,”
said Nandi a little cheekily, “you’re so generous about keeping
your promises—you gave him a diamond finger so he could kill anything and
anyone just by pointing it at them.”

‘“He threatened
everyone, even the gods,” said Brahma and continued, “Thank
goodness, Vishnu had the good sense to enchant him in the guise of a female dancer
and …”

‘“Yes, that was
sooper!” said Shiva, who is also the creator of dance, “You got
him to copy all your movements and then pointed your finger to your thigh and when
he did the same … Ba-buh-bah-Booommm! He exploded!” They all
laughed uproariously. The thunder rolled, lightning struck and the wind howled as if
with laughter.

‘On earth, Rishyasringa,
dipped the sacred kusa grass in the loshta vessel, and raised it to the heavens in
an urgent prayer for divine intervention. The sacred flames grew higher.

‘Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva
could feel the amber glow of its warmth. The laughter subsided. Vishnu said,
“It is time. When I destroyed Ravana the last time, he mocked me saying I
had deceived him as a woman and it wasn’t fair. Now I must fight him as a
man.”

‘Nandi sighed.

‘“I will be born as
Dasaratha’s son,” said Vishnu decisively and smiled.

‘Brahma and Shiva embraced
their friend and, speaking as one, said, “You will forget where you have
come from. You will fight with the heart and mind of a man. Our energy is always
there for you to draw from. It will help you triumph. But do not forget that every
cell of creation, every atom of being, is light. Keep truth and love as your weapons
against the dark forces of delusion. That will make everything return to light,
where everything belongs. Remember, you are not alone.”

‘Some of the brighter devas
who had gathered outside were able to tune into the frequency of the airwaves in
which Brahma and Shiva were speaking. They led the chorus in Devaloka:
“
Truth Will Triumph with Light; No More Delusion
and Darkness … Truth Will Triumph with Light!
”

‘On earth the wind stopped
howling. Everyone looked up. The clouds were clearing and a soft amethyst glow
spread across the sky. There was a light shower of rain and then the warm, moist air
filled with a scattering of fragrant kannakambaram and mallika petals and tulasi
leaves. “Very auspicious signs, a good omen!” the crowds of
Ayodhya murmured.

‘In Ayodhya, the eagle-shaped
enclosure reserved for royal religious ceremonies was studded with rubies and
emeralds encased in gold. King Dasaratha sat inside it, with his three wives seated
on each side of the square fire altar. Agni was the fire deva creating a bridge with
his golden cord of flames between earth and Devaloka. Agni in the form of pure fire
was always called upon to translate people’s prayers to the Greats and be
the bridge between human longing and its fulfilment.

‘Dasaratha had been listening
to all the sacred and purifying chants with concentration. When it was time to offer
his personal prayers, he washed his hands with the gulak water and folded his palms.
Eyes closed, he prayed with intense longing, and love, for a son and an heir.

‘More sacred herbs, roots and
fragmented barks of tree were delicately cast into the sacrificial fire. The golden
flames began to rise gently at first and then to leap. In the midst of it, a golden
figure appeared. Through the veil of fire it looked at first like a golden lion
sitting on its haunches. The flames and the fur were of the same burnished gold. It
roared within the blazing fire. As the lion seemed to descend from the sky like a
chariot of the devas within the diminishing flames, it turned into a goddess. She
was dressed in gold with blood-red and dark blue gems glistening about her neck,
wrists, ears, head and feet. She held a golden bowl with a carved lid. It was an
awesome sight. Dasaratha was dazed and speechless. He stood with hands outstretched
to salute the goddess; instead, he found he was holding the golden bowl. It was not
a figment of his imagination! When he looked again, the goddess had vanished and the
golden flames were dancing, kissing and crackling.