by Daljit Nagra
Chapter Six: Rocky Woman Show Up!
Rama revives the ideal woman and contemplates her story.
On the outskirts of Mithila,
a fabled city where they would rest and meet its king,
the sage took the boys past a neglected ashram.
Rama, by the entrance, walked over a raised
slab-stone. No sooner had he touched the stone
than the stone was enlivened by his foot.
Before him the stone whirled upwards
into the image of an immaculate curvaceous woman.
The curvaceous woman
appeared a mirage at first
then fleshed into a miracle
of flesh and blood!
She stooped before Rama, and poured from her
ocean wafts and tender flower scents,
‘May the Lord bless your feet.
That you are rooted at heart.
How long I have felt this broad-sided justice.’
Not looking
in the slightest way stirred, Rama turned
to Sage Viswamithra and enquired after the woman.
Said the sage, ‘This ideal beauty is Ahalya.
Formed by the gods
then raised here on earth by her mentor, Sage Gautama.’
The sage told Rama, it was natural
that Gautama and Ahalya wed
when they fell head-over-heels.
Once married they were the perfect brain-to-brawn couple
ever-after.
But one of the supreme gods, Indra it was,
been always horny for Ahalya. He lost self-control.
One day, as Gautama went for his river wash
and prayers at the bank
Indra was like a cloud ready to burst!
And burst he did by spilling down to earth
as Ahalya’s husband. Exact-same copy.
But hornier! Horny as
Ahalya and Gautama on their marital night.
Ahalya was naturally enough most pleased
and surrendered screaming her great jollification.
As the first round of the intercourse peaked
through the woods
Gautama cottoned on to
Ahalya’s
fabric-tearing
lust-cries.
He was hot on the cry trail and arrived home
watching a bed couple bonking
for round two! An eyeful for an eye fool!
Gautama saw the buttocks of some poltroony fellow
leap off his missus and turn into a cat
sneaking off for a cat-flap. Gautama said,
‘O cat, I say it – cursed be your body,
covered all over with rude-appearing slits!’
The cat meowed away, freckled with rude-appearing slits.
Indra would become the butt of jokes in heaven.
He would brood in a lock-up with darkness for a friend,
neglecting his worlds. Brahma would eventually forgive
repentant Indra by blinking each of those slits into a gem.
Most gods are not so lucky winning forgiveness
no wonder Indra’s called the Gemmy God!
Back to Gautama, who was still bristling – now with his wife,
‘Lateral lecher, I say it! I have not satisfied you too much?
May your frisky features turn into a
lateral
granite
floor-slab!’
Ahalya’s pleadings were off the pace:
she was humiliating herself by saying,
‘Who’s the real Gautama?
How is it, that cat was my husband?’
Too damn late it all was …
Ahalya felt a silicon feeling sludging slowly
through her feet and upwards
her joints senseless firming slabby.
Gautama sensed he may have been stung
by a charso-bee, poked by a hornswoggle: in short, duped!
He pitied his pleading wife
and sneaked-in a get-out clause,
‘Ahalya, I say it – your salvation
may it one day come at the feet of Rama.’
The sage then waited for Rama to speak.
Rama, stock-still,
by the ashram which was overgrown with shadows, said,
‘What is it in nature’s diurnal housing,
nature’s inward store and safe-keeping
that it take to its heart something
wished into nothing?
Why or how does this, the mightiest of all, Nature,
revive desolate
ash
into scented being again?
What is this pulsing beneath my feet
that knows what I do not?
What am I become
if I would not bless
what nature would not immaterialise?’
The sage pressed for more,
‘But nothing is in itself, Rama …’
‘It appears this woman was taken
from the sacred vows of marriage
by another man, albeit a god in mortal form.
Could Gautama keep her at home
and permit his reputation’s casting out?
Yet Ahalya has served her punishment.
I say, let us be measured
only by the path we intend.’
Gautama, had been amidst thorns, behind the ashram,
praying for Rama these years.
He now rose
from his hunched state and was watched
lighting up like a starry night. He was seeing his wife –
his wife with a lavanyakam flower in her hair
nearing…
The perfect pair hugged to the pealing bells in the distance.
Rama blessed them so their minds
be meted for fresh beginnings.
If only all our world’s misunderstandings
were blessed by Rama
and our failed loves could begin, with stars in their eyes, again.
Book Second: The Marriage Bow
CHAPTER ONE: WAS THAT LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT?
CHAPTER TWO: THE MARRIAGE BOW
CHAPTER THREE: CHOODAMANI
CHAPTER FOUR: LADY IN WAITING
CHAPTER FIVE: TWO WISH
CHAPTER SIX: GOD BLESS THE … KING …?
CHAPTER SEVEN: FATE
CHAPTER EIGHT: GOLDEN SLIPPER NANDIGRAM GOVERNMENT
Chapter One: Was that Love at First Sight?
Rama arrives in Mithila and is struck by a woman on her balcony.
Fan your imagination on Ayodhya’s look-alike: Mithila
with its towers turrets domes
all golden or pastel,
and in a gentle season
the ground glittering with cast-off
jewellery –
a snapped necklace dashed mid-dance,
or nuisance diamonds during a passionate embrace
discarded!
And no Mithilan craving to bag the casual
chucked-away pearl
for such is the manner of the rich among the rich
in caring sharing Mithilan fertility,
that perfect match for an Ayodhyan.
Rama and Lakshmana fanning their gaze
on swings strapped to trees swaying with couples
and nearby, the girls
wore a length of keshauma cotton
that whirled about the body
and pointed
to the S type
anklets.
And pointed to the bell-topped toe-ring on each toe,
each toe-ring specially designed to suit that toes’ darling mien
and speaking a while longer of toe-rings
some girls wore the cheeky come-on rings that were
double-bosom’d
and filled with a
tinsy knocker
dingling its own tantalising tune, hiehie!
What’s more, all girls strode about wondrously bar
efooted!
All rehearsed love tunes or danced to soft gomgoms,
no wonder Rama and Lakshmana
smiled to the music of their hooting, their panting!
The brothers walked past the hotshot array
of wide-moustached
culgee-turbaned archers come from near and far
to put their pinging bows to the test. And there,
whilst by the stream, Rama’s
eyes lifted upwards
and there across on a balcony
from where the cool breeze blew off the balmy sea
a woman in shining
kausheyam silk
with a spotted deer border
and with eyes brilliant as the lotus
and with her feet all of a sudden rooted
so she looked the double of the goddess Lakshmi!
Rama’s second take
on who is that, is that
the beauty of the world
across on the balcony
observing the jamboree …?
And her eyes fell
according to the exact second of the cosmic dial
that we call fate,
on Rama’s eyes
at the same time
as Rama’s had flown
startled upon hers.
Their heartbeats doubled on the same count
and harkened in a shared breath.
The harkening damsel was
Sita
who was taking in her familiar Mithilan view
when she fell on a feeling of greater familiarity
punctuated by the sorrow of utter unknowing.
Whilst Rama dazed at her beauty, Sita dazed at his
and thought to herself how this must be
the veiled recognition
that we call love at first sight.
Together they had walked, aeon after aeon,
fresh as bold new lovers, under the starry lanes
in heaven:
he as Vishnu and she as Lakshmi.
’Twas in this incarnation,
under all the depredations a human endures,
and a lapsed memory
being amongst our most humbling torments,
through which each looked upon the other:
a stranger.
When Rama disappeared from view, Sita felt
a withering
for her heart had absorbed a love dart!
Wounded by love, virgin love, she remained.
The bangles on her wrists slumped downward till,
by her attendants, she was spread on a soft bed
far from the formal mood sought by her obligations.
She was heard murmuring,
‘… emerald shoulders … blue-sky beauty …
who are you?
why have you invaded me
pinching my heart to leave me ashamed?
i wish you stood before me now as a god…
only to you i feel i would freely speak my mind …’
Her maids lit cool lamps,
whose wicks were soothed with clarified butter,
they found even this flame proved intolerable
and Sita survived only by soft light so the maids tempered
the darkness with spread-about luminous gems.
Dark rings fringed her eyes.
When she moaned that her bed was not soft
her maids made her bed on a plate of moonstone
with layered softest petals
but the flowers wilted.
Ache prolonged agonised writhing ache.
Darkened days and nights left her quizzing,
‘Was he only hallucination …’
And Rama? Enough to say,
when at the lodgings, he sensed his whole being
being sacrificed to a girl with curly locks across her forehead!
Rama wondered if she was married
but if she were
would he have felt such a fine dart of desire?
On one whose bow was schooled in the art
of demonology, on one whose bow depended
demon death,
now fondling his mind with a girl in flowing silks for armour,
with a bow of sugarcane and flowers for arrows,
how could she so softly have felled him?
Rama smiled at the irony.
Chapter Two: The Marriage Bow
King Janaka seeks a husband for his daughter. Rama must shoot an arrow to win himself a bride.
Sage Viswamithra introduced the boys to King Janaka.
He knew the king of Kosala would be struck
by royal stock turned warriors armed with weapons.
Indeed, the king, straight off, considered Rama
a fitting match
for his daughter.
One drawback, the king had a massive arrow-bow
and guess what, the king had set a condition
that anyone man enough to pluck his daughter
would first have to pluck up their manliness
by one: lifting the rather large bow
two: bending it
three: stringing it
and fourthly: shooting an arrow
so, fifthly and ultimately, becoming a stunner’s lover ever-after!
The sage was hardly surprised to hear
countless suitors had failed the big five,
turned stroppy then stormed the palace
to make off with Sita.
Charming.
The king mourned his ambitious condition,
‘The elect man, or such a one, must win Sita.
You know, Sage, she was not from a human born.
I am reminded all this
world belongs to Mother Earth.
Only in the fancy of a mirrored mind
do these belongings become subject to a pomp kingdom.
Once upon a time
I zigzagged through clumpy mango
and guava groves
traipsing through banana plantations to reach a stone-field.
It was there I sought to bless the earth
and our peoples with peace.
Using a rough old ditched plough
I cracked the barren with straight furrows.
Not stopping till the sun was behind the citrus trees
when from a furrow I heard a sound. Of crying.
Tired and panting, I delved the furrows
and soon found what my blade had brought out:
a baby.
A radiant baby girl
borne by warm earth whilst cradled on a wooden arch.
I lifted up the naked baby.
Suddenly the ground cracking, laboured aside
as the arch lifted upwards!
The arch creaking out wider and wider till it rocked
gently and fully upon the earth.
A giant bow, it was, with a golden string.
Imagine a bow being nature’s umbilicus.
From a deadly weapon sprung cuddly life.
I swaddled the baby that my wife and I had craved.
We named her after her birth place: Sita: furrow.’
The sage seemed unsurprised and suggested,
‘Are there divine tinkerings in birth and bow matters?
Perhaps the gods favour you in some way.
Would you bring the bow out for Rama to inspect?’
Locked in a box and smouldering with aloeswood smoke,
the bow was hoicked on eight pairs of enormous wheels.
It was so huge it proved incomprehensible in one view:
unless you stood off you’d never see it whole!
The onlookers feared that the king rather keep his Sita at home
and free from some regal dunderhead –
why else be harsh with his conditions?
They worried for Rama that he must lift the bow.
A gong rang out for Rama to pluck the bow.
The audience watched him calmly measure it up.
They clos
ed their eyes and hummed prayers
to bother the imminent crush
but to their great mystification
the boy was raising the weapon and placing it on a toe.
The bow, wide as a rainbow, was being drawn inward
under the non-stop force of Rama’s grip on the golden string.
Gosh!
Rama kept at it till the arrow, heavy as a tree,
got blasted into the clouds
and who couldn’t hear, when the bow tips touched,
as it shattered like two mountains rent apart.
And who couldn’t see the firework display –
the flying bow-shards exploding through the eminence!
Having missed some man-to-be in his fullest to-do,
Sita still pined for her balcony scene. From where she watched
perfumes being sprinkled
and people donning their best and dancing at the palace gates
relieved the king’s judgement had been judicious,
that a fit lad would meet his match. How cool!
Cool enough that the gods
hovered earthward, in human form,
and mingled among the humans who were
dancing the sandalwood-sprinkled night away!
Chapter Three: Choodamani
The wedding of Rama and Sita.
Is there anything gaudier, more glorious or heart-breaking