by Daljit Nagra
than a good old-fashioned wedding?
The husband will henceforth be nourished by a wife
but the bridal parents must relinquish the breakfast hugs
a daughter has daily blessed upon them.
A wedding is sighs, a wedding is laughter,
a wedding is footloose arms-in-the-air clamorous enjollament,
a wedding is
Rama’s father receiving a jolly invite
from King Janaka
for a bride and groom embarking on their belle vie,
‘so kindly come with all your peoples to celebrate’.
On the sandy streets of Ayodhya, on the streets of Mithila
who is not hearing the elephant-loud trumpeting,
All you beauties please be coming
by-and-by to partying party party!
Suddenly the whole of Ayodhya
on the streets ready for the trek to the kingdom of Kosala.
When the huge mass assembled
then shuffled onward
it seemed as though the world was in procession
surging like the waves and tides of the Ganges.
The gathering can be summarised by admiring the youth:
when a boy fell off his horse
and into a palanquin, and into the arms of a honey-smelling
lover –
the lover didn’t sting him with a slap
instead they spun themselves into laugh aloud gupshup
and would not need parting,
couples in a strop
soon patched up,
and dumbbell-armed lads stood by a river
offering to carry across their dreamboat,
the dreamboat that sought no better transportation!
Camels were happy with their necklace sacks
of margosa leaves to moisten the parched throats
so they continued wearing that comedian smile.
All listened to proud talk about wondrous Rama
winning the most beautiful woman
as proved by the ultimate praise
that this Sita
had thighs
shapely as
elephant trunks.
Four days jollity later, they arrived at King Janaka’s capital
to the sounds of bugles and gomgoms.
The miles-long line of the party on the royal road
was embraced into homes, palaces and camps
as the heart-strings of Ayodhya strummed
along with the heart-strings of harpy Mithila.
The two kings met
and in an instant two powerful states were bonded,
for marriage is not about two people
but about two tribes forging fellowship,
couples commingling their communities
so affection’s commerce
is forever being overlapped
and broadened in the great flow of humanity at one.
A father was escorted to meet his son
and that father, King Dasaratha, pumped with pride at Rama
whose stature now seemed manly.
Then, amidst the carousing, came the big day.
Rama, with his robes as though dipped in saffron,
blazing along on the Royal Elephant in fullest paraphernalia
through the ecstatic streets.
On the marriage platform, Janaka offered flowers, incense
and other symbols of health and wealth.
A sacred fire was kindled and incantations rang out.
Then Janaka brought in his daughter.
The congregation gasped because Sita
seemed the double of Lakshmi who had stood upon a lotus.
Sita’s kausheya-silk dress was gold and the edging raised gold
which was woven close as inseparable swans.
Janaka held a round pearl on a gold leaf, the Choodamani,
then he placed it in Sita’s hair above her forehead.
The Choodamani was a crown serving the elect face.
When Sita was alongside Rama, Janaka spoke,
‘Here is my Sita. In giving Sita I give my ground.
Look at her. Never tire of looking at her.
Take her hand in your hand
and evermore she will walk alongside you
as your own shadow walks alongside you.’
On the marriage platform, Rama’s heart-stopping moment:
he observed for the first time his bride.
He who had lifted a godly bow
became woozy with fear and wonder:
would this be the beauty of the world
that he had observed, that day on her balcony?
As he lifted the veil, to his great release,
he saw once again the face that had completed his being
now complete his being once again
as he hoped it would for ever more.
Impossible to imagine how she felt
as she wondered upwards to observe
the face, the exact-same face,
she had once seen from her balcony
beaming at her, again!
The face that had made her senseless
now made her deepen with ocean-scented aromas
as though she were flown atop a lotus leaf.
Chapter Four: Lady in Waiting
Mantara worries for Queen Kaikey’s future.
Mantara, the whisperer and dream-pot stirrer
who maddened sleep. Mantara, the soothsayer
dire! Mantara, with her high back,
made forecasts that made news on the stands
that struck you between the eyes!
Mantara the maid, Queen Kaikey’s trusted maid.
King Dasaratha’s favourite wife, Queen Kaikey,
knew from Mantara that the wizened king had been
hearing
howling torments
on the spines of comets.
Queen Kaikey knew from Mantara that astrologers
had predicted the king’s stars, that Mars and Jupiter
were aspecting the same house,
in other words, his numbers were nearly up.
The king had then suddenly announced he would spend
his last days throne-free.
The queen knew Rama would be next on the throne,
and good job too. Rama was being readied for the throne,
albeit in great haste.
’Twas then, Mantara rushed in to see Queen Kaikey.
Something was on Mantara’s mind. She began mockingly:
‘Why is Rama’s mother giving everyone gold gifts?
Has she come into another fortune?’
The queen merely grinned. The king’s three wives were equals.
Next move, but a tad more direct, ‘Why is it
you skip around
like a girl? Have you reckoned fully your future?’
Despite Mantara’s weird mood, the queen held out
a diamond necklace gift
to celebrate Rama’s great fortune.
Said Mantara, ‘What, is this Rama your son?’
No response again. Then very direct, risking everything,
Mantara smashed the jewels
down at the tiles!
Sweet Queen Kaikey, in her regional accent, japed,
‘You are getting picky-dicky, Mantara …
Is my taste too old-fashioned for you?’
‘It is not jewels I need. My dear Queen,
like that necklace, you too will soon be on the ground …’
‘That is a very hard fall for me, Mantara.’
Instead of heeding the queen, the queen’s jugular
was felt to be up for grabs by a calmer voice now,
‘Your beauty
my beloved Queen
and your youth,
as I’m sure you know, are your glittering prowess.
But beauty, like a torrent, like youth,
rushing down the mountainside as it upends flowers and leaves
might for the duration
hold the observer in a spell.
When it passes,
or lies slumped like a heap of mess,
what is left? After youth and the passing of beauty?
Dear Queen, in its place you will be a sandy bed!
When the diamonds about your delicious neck
highlight your wrinkles,
when your most kissable cheeks
sag like cheap ear-rings
you will be counterfeit!
A bad copy, not stirring recognition of former glamour.
Plunder and oblivion. Plunder and oblivion
brushing you aside
with the back of the king’s hand or the king’s children’s
hands.
You will be, as other queens before you,
ring-fenced far away from your darlings and your darling
king.’
Queen Kaikey pushed Mantara for more,
‘Give me a mirror.
What? Have I slept so bad last night
that my face is chip-chopped by the choppiest sea-wrinkles?’
Mantara, who had raised the queen,
cut in,
‘Where is Bharat? Your own dear son?
Why was he recently dispatched to your father’s house
when the future of Ayodhya is finding new feet?
Why is he not making his stand?’
The queen leapt up, alarmed by her own lively activity:
‘Wonderful news! Rama is becoming king
and are you not mortaring and pestling some fresh
clove-scented mischief?’
‘My sorrow is for the doom that overhangs you.
It reminds me of the little dove entering
the jaws of a wildcat.
Dear Queen, I was there once,
back in the days when the middle-aged king sought you,
late one night he was at it persuading your father
that despite his
age this teenage girl should be his bride.
And how did he persuade your father?
Well I overheard our king promise him
that your firstborn would overleap his other sons
and become king – in return for your hand!
And that is how you were won.’
Queen Kaikey sensed her skin ripple with wrinkles,
or fear of them at least. Her frail retort,
‘I do not see the difference between Rama and Bharat.’
‘So why is it your dancing feet seem so heavy?
Rama will banish your own Bharat or break him
or behead him!
You will be untouchable in your status
of an ex-
queen
of an ex-
king.
At best, you will be stooped to a heel
serving Rama’s giddy, gold-gift-wafting mummy-jee
who would love to be chucking, like yesterday’s rice,
the kings favourite dish.’
‘Never. How dare she even rise to it!’
Thus the queen was contracted.
Chapter Five: Two Wish
Queen Kaikey tells the king she would like to claim her wishes.
King Dasaratha hurried to fill in Queen Kaikey
that soon as tomorrow Rama would be king
and could he, the ex-king, book a date
for gadding about
the cucumber garden with his no.1 queen?
His silken joy felt burred
when he heard the queen was holed in the Bile Room,
an annexe part of the palace where you could cool off:
a posh shed kept purple, unkempt, with serpent skins.
He walked into the Bile Room and saw Queen Kaikey
with kohl smudged, like ash, on her upper cheeks,
wild roaring hair as though tugged
by chimps. Yet to the king she was still his
Naga goddess!
In the gloom, the king apologised
for not telling her the great news sooner.
He wondered what anger she was burning off.
‘Dust and rags have become my fate.’
Her luscious voice roused the king into youthly moods.
‘But Queen, let us drive about in our chariot
waving at the revellers.’
Futile hope. He sat on a footstool by the queen
and heard her insist he give her her due.
‘You remember the battlefield,
in that war between the gods, when you rose to the high
heavens
to rescue the mighty-fighty Indra
and found yourself prickled with arrows?
It was I who drove you from the dark fields
and plucked arrows out from you.’
Suddenly his sizzling joints ached:
he couldn’t look at the queen
for her beauty was making him idle:
she seemed a goddess lowered from the heavens
and hunkered in the Bile Room.
‘Yes, my Queen, I remember it well.
Any chariot would have killed its wheels over me.’
‘I nursed you, keeping you safe from public gupshup.’
The king solemnly replied,
‘I have not forgotten nor will I ever.’
‘You remember you insisted on two wishes.
You said I must have what is pleasing my heart.’
‘I did, indeed.’
Always when he came back tired from court
Queen Kaikey never sought details or meddled
but waited at the doors to tickle him with tender hugs …
And mostly for this she was his
favourite wife. How unlike herself she was now, so stiff,
‘I was not intending ever to request my wishes.
But I shall ask for my wishes now.
If you refuse, you will be the first of the descendants
of the Sun God to go back on your word.
Monarchs, all, will shun you. Common people will laugh at
you.
You have heard it tell of Saibya –
to keep his promise to a hawk he cut the flesh
clean away from his own bones and flung it to that bird.’
‘Fear not, Queen. Speak freely.’
The queen took a deep breath and found herself
speaking her wishes,
‘Crown our son
Bharat
king.
Banish
Rama.
Banish Rama deep in the forest for fourteen years.’
Staggering to
his feet
the king looked faint.
He seemed blinded in the way he looked away,
‘Will the kings not shun me as a foolish dotard?
Rama will do as told for he never acts in two ways …’
The queen was now unstoppered,
‘Send presently a messenger to bring home Bharat.
And tell Rama to begin his fourteen years.’
With his eyes still shut, the king whispered,
‘Are you a demon?’ ‘Don’t you curse me, King!
I never asked you to come looking for me with your glee.
Go back to Rama’s mother.’
And so they spent the night to-ing and fro-ing
in insults and attempts at persuasion by the king.
The night ended in the Bile Room;
a queen on the floor, a glorious king on a broken couch.
Chapter Six: God Bless the … King …?
Rama is informed of the king’s wishes.
The roaring coronation fire put out,
the crowded guests
for Rama’s anointment were informed the ceremony
would be delayed and, worst of all,
Rama’s date with kingly fate was now kaput!
Rama’s favourite elephant, Shatrunjaya,
dropped his head in despair and beat his feet.
&nbs
p; Gossip blushed each man’s cheek
that the sweetest of queens, Queen Kaikey, was to blame.
Rama met the king and Queen Kaikey,
the king meekly cried out, ‘Rama.’ then left.
The king was bad out of shape, he was like a deer
trembling before a rumbling-belly tigress.
Queen Kaikey took charge of the two wishes,
‘It is your duty to help your father keep his word.
You must stay away for the full fourteen term,
returning along with Sita, if you take her, only then.
The king prays your sojourn is safe. Is uneventful.’
Rama listened as Kaikey continued,
‘All the while you must be adorned
in tree-bark and deerskin only.
And live on the fruits and roots you’ve plucked.
If you do not satisfaction these terms
you will shame your father
in this and further worlds.
It is your duty as a son.’
Rama broke down the shock,
piece by piece, within himself
and absorbed all
without a single question, replying,
‘I do not crave office. I am happy finding kinship
in the forest. My only sorrow is that, since a father
is divinity incarnate to his children,
could not my father, my guru, break me
this news?’
Rama wasn’t expecting an answer. Nor got one.
The queen, so distraught at having to execute the strong arm,
longed for a long spell in the Bile Room. Especially