Ramayana
Page 9
‘In this world it happens time and time again,
one man is deafening and thousands feel the shock.
It is not the one who does not listen that alone suffers.’
Raavana interjected, ‘How can this Sita,
famed for her beauty, desire a mere mortal?
Is it a blessing or a curse but every woman ever
has looked with love-heart candying eyes upon me.
These riches that Kubera endowed in my person
pull me beyond my mind’s vast engine.’
Mareecha sounded wearied, ‘This seems a gargantuan
flaw
leaving your heart
exposed.’
Whilst Raavana talked, Mareecha mused to himself
about the nine types of men, who if angered, cause ill;
the nine being the rich, the rogue, the spy, the soldier,
the priest, the doctor, the poet, the bard of the charmed voice
and, of course, the ruler.
Raavana stood up
and simply cheered himself,
‘… so no more of this rhapsodising and pious mumbling.
You only can help me Mareecha.
Get Rama gallivanting for you
and I the rest to his piety will do!’
Chapter Four: Golden Deer, please!
Sita sees a golden deer and wants to keep it.
A golden deer with precious stones
naturally bristling from its legs.
Wahwah, thought Sita whilst strolling around Panchavati.
Then rushing indoors to Rama,
‘That animal over there followed me to our gate.
What silver streaming circles over its skin,
its hooves must be lapis lazuli. What high-grade gold.
Could we keep it here?
Or if it is slippery to catch could we not keep
its skin for when we return to the palace?’
Lakshmana looking outside,
‘See the other deer
are keeping back from it. Let it nibble away.
Surely no goldie creature lives.’
Said Rama, ‘Vishnu’s creations are endless and beauteous.
How can we know for sure
such a creature couldn’t exist?’
Said Sita, ‘If you two debate this till supper
the deer will run off
becoming once more illusion.’
They laughed at Sita’s comic timing.
Lakshmana persevered it must be an ‘infernal thing’
and, ‘… it could be Mareecha, the raksassy,
famed for changing into animals.
No end of hunting kings has this deer-demon killed for his
dinner.’
Rama’s hunch was contrary.
He wanted so much to please his unpampered wife
and said to Sita,
‘Your wishes are my duty.’
Then ran for the deer. The deer ran far off
but kept pricking its ears in a cheeky come-on,
and each time Rama nearly caught up,
the deer would draw its hooves to its ears
then spring
zigzagging away
to emerge on a hill
with a passing cloud behind it.
How long had he chased the deer …?
Lakshmana might be correct. Sighting the deer again,
Rama shot an arrow,
shot an arrow direct into its comb-haired belly.
Mareecha, who all along had been the deer,
and had been running
at the speed of fear was slain.
Still he remembered to complete his mission,
and screamed out in Rama’s voice,
Rama deafened by the deer. The deer dying
was turning into saint, a saintly raksassy.
Wholly improbable! Mareecha’s cry
sped
for Sita’s ears.
Sita flipped,
‘Go Lakshmana.
I heard Rama.
He is surely hurt. O please, now, go!’
Sita sobbed at Lakshmana’s protests,
‘Don’t you know your own husband?
Who could hurt him? Would Rama cry out?’
Sita looked daggers at him,
shouting go!
Lakshmana felt caught. He said, ‘I will go
but on one condition.
Jatayu must be close.’
‘Go!!!’
Chapter Five: One Shot: Thirteen!
Rama and Lakshmana are surrounded by Mareecha’s army.
Ambush extraordinary.
When Lakshmana caught up with Rama
and word ringed the woods that before reaching his army
Mareecha had been killed
Mareecha’s army had near-ringed Rama.
Into this forest cauldron near bubbling with heat
fell Lakshmana. Two against two hundred at least.
Training from Sage Viswamithra must be employed, NOW.
Crimson streaked the sky. Rama smiled,
‘You come at a charmed time.
I sense foul shapes behind hills and trees.’
Said Lakshmana, ‘My right hand is throbbing,
look how my arrows fume and ooze smoke.’
The dead man’s dear army came forth on sea monsters.
They beat their great gongs for battle. The battle began.
Hundreds of gold-tipped arrows
like sun-rays danced towards the brothers.
The brothers jinked and funked
till each arrow was shielded or flunked away
though one or two left them scorched.
Rama’s bow was bent back
on itself circumferencing
almost to a circle.
His heron-feathered arrow after arrow
blitzed the scene. The brother’s arrows largely met flesh.
The cauldron was clogged with death cries.
Round after round beat back
raksassy arrows and tridents.
Forth stepped the valiant Trishira who thundered his chariot
at Rama
then fired such a potent volley of arrows
that three landed in Rama’s forehead
yet Rama called out,
‘This is being struck by flowers!’
Rama fought back with arrows. The two men’s arrows
met head to head and fell away.
Rama and Trishira now fought with swords. Their power
equivalent to that between a lion and an elephant in combat.
Trishira was no turn up for the books
eye-poker from the cradle
he stabbed Rama in the chest!
This merely impressed Rama who admired a skilled fighter
and lamented the tragic waste of a craftsman turned rogue.
With sufficient wits
Rama managed to counter so his blade
went through Trishira’s heart
as a snake slips down an anthill.
Lakshmana’s powerful arrow-rounds soon diminished
the remaining soldiers.
It was horsey-face Kora next,
Raavana’s brother, who stepped forth in his chariot –
ornamented with refined gold, with poles made of beryl
and its sides carved with fish, flowers, moons and stars.
He punched his chariot through the skies
then struck arrows down at Rama,
invincible arrows like sparkling fires,
so many close-leaning arrows at once
that Rama was pierced.
Kora stormed for Rama
but Rama, streaking blood,
had the measure of Kora and with an almighty arrow
he severed Kora’s gold-notched standard
bringing the craft to ground.
Rama fired off six selected arrows at Kora’s head.
Kora slapped back the arrows with his own arrows.
Kora fired four arrows that tore at Rama’s legs.
The arrows sliced through
Kora’s thick-shouldered yoke with one,
his four horses with four,
the charioteer’s head with the sixth,
three smashed the triple pole,
two the axle,
Kora’s bow and arrow with his twelfth arrow,
and the thirteenth,
the thunderbolt arrow, ripped all over the shop
the floor-flooding Kora body.
Any soldiers still with hope
now scrammed from the scene.
Scrammed from the scene
of thirteen wowser arrows, by jiminy!
Chapter Six: How to simply Sweep a Lady off her Feet
An old man visits Sita whilst Lakshmana is away searching for Rama.
A rat-a-tat-tapping at the cottage entrance
at which the very trees held their breath.
The air. Did it move? No. Wind-God scarpered.
Nature’s inner-turmoil at an elderly sage in ochre robes.
Even Avari, the River-God, flowed softly
for fear the sage send it off course
with a curse, from his mouth,
for no good reason popping out.
‘Is anybody … there? Anybody … to welcome
an old but benignant sage?’
Trembly watery voice.
The sage was lean, holding a staff and begging bowl.
Sita had been praying for Rama when she answered the door.
At his first Sita-sight,
the old man buzzing
abutting his own teeming blood.
Sita stood there: even in drab garb
she looked a grab!
She was a streak of lightning
felling the crusty oldie.
He noticed her brows like the bow of a goddess,
the cups of her breasts propped
and proud as lotus buds
her skin clear as a jewel
and her complexion shining as if floating with gold.
This not being reward enough
the sage spoke his finest Sanskrit,
‘Some alms for one who kindly always
prostrate prays for the correct three-world conduct?’
The old man watched Sita contemplate an offering.
He saw too the faint golden circle
and knew it was a circle of untouchability,
the Circle of Chastity.
He saw Sita remained inside it.
He wondered if he could tease her out of it.
‘I cannot go to the kitchen so could you please
help yourself in there.’
‘But madam, an alm is bestowed. Not taken.
Am I looking a crook?’
‘You must be a mighty sage to be so deep in the forest.’
‘It is rumoured.’ The old man, unbeknown to himself,
blushed.
To obtain the rice grains
Sita must leave the Lakshmana Rekha.
Sita furrowed her forehead.
She looked outside.
As if lost
in a moment
when a moment is definitive
Sita crossed
the threshold, the golden Rekha
and as she walked across it it
vanished … Sita watched
her grains
fill the old
man’s bowl.
The sage was already imagining
his impending life of Riley now the impediment was gone.
He thought to himself, I shall make her queen of my empire
and spend my life executing her cutie commands.
How amazing was my sister to spot the perfect lady.
I must make my sister the queen of my empire
whilst I go tooty-footing everyday with Sita …
He was already forgetting
Sita would be queen of his kingdom. Sita enquired,
‘What brings a frail sage so deep in this forest?’
Somewhat swoony-mooded and smiley,
‘I am here to adore the omniscient ultimate: the
chuckerbutty.
He, with ten astounding heads, cornucopias life.
Have you not felt the chuckerbutty?’
Sita felt bested; parched,
‘I had heard bad rumour.’
The old man thought he’d win her in his elderly state,
‘Each lady he chucker, that is to say, walk around,
he makes divine.’
‘Is this chuckerbutty a raksassy?’
Nothing hard to lean
at, she stared
outside.
‘Indeed, raksassy are the most blissed
but not lax as they are publicised.’
From somewhere hardening in herself,
‘I think … their salad days are done.
My Lord’s mission – to rid them; building peace …’ ‘No
meagre man can do that.
It would be like a rabbit goring an elephant gang.’
The old man was so close that he stank of tamarind.
‘Did not once a mere two-shoulder man called Parasuram
once coop this mighty ten-headed Raavana
till he was weeping for release?’ Sudden
the old man’s blood shot up. He ground his teeth.
Like heaped snake skins
his wrinkly skin flaked off for the floor.
He expanded to his normal
freak finicky contours.
Sita was startled.
‘Hello Lady,
now before you I am
the divine Raavana.
O swanlike one
my ten heads have never before bowed to another.
You are beauty’s flame.’
He took off his crowns
dropped to his ten brows
and knelt before Sita.
Sita impassioned herself and –
‘Do I look the touching kind?
My Lord’s hands are now flying for your heart.’
Raavana liked her even more for the spirited attack.
‘Rama’s darts cannot catch me.
Sooner expect a mountain to split from a straw touch.’
Raavana was a true lover:
only careful wooing was the way he would float her boat.
But he felt rushed, it came out too cocky,
‘Come now to my crystal bed in Lanka.
Let’s be getting tip-top pleasure!’
Sita waxed back, enraged,
‘What gulf there is between a lion and a jackal
there is between you and Rama.
What gulf there is between a nectar and sour gruel
there is between you and Rama.’
And on she could have gone comparing
gold and lead, elephant and cat, sandalwood and mire
EXCEPT that
rather than vilely grab Sita and cheapen her beauty,
Raavana, from under Sita’s feet,
simply by the power of one gentle hand
was scooping up
the ground beneath her.
Sita was being lifted.
He carried the lot to his chariot which was powered by
a tandem team of lions!
A team of lions that flew vamooooooose …
Sita was still shouting, ‘You goonda!’ to Raavana
Poor old tired sleepy Jatayu
heard screams above his tree.
He flew out and was soon out there wide awake
alongside Raavana, saying,
‘You are a famous king,
perhaps even the god of all gods.
Many have called you the ten-peaked King of Heaven.’
Raavana’s roaring beasts speeded their car.
Jatayu caught up again and sought reply,
‘How once I too, like all my tribe, loved you.
But look at this acting hoodlum conduct.
Save yourself, Raa
vana, and pass me Sita.’
‘Save yourself! Save yourself Jatayu. Flap away.’
Jatayu calmly, as ever, in a cut-glass loquacity,
‘Raavana, remember the folly of the sand-piper
sleeping with uplifted feet so it keep the sky
from falling on its nest, on its young.
The wife of a king deserves protection.
What kind of king steals another man’s wife?
Do the wise lay open their conduct for public censure?’
But Raavana cut in again that Jatayu should leave.
Still Jatayu persevered, ‘Raavana, justice, for good or ill,
is grounded in a king. Let me help you
recall your good deeds.’
Raavana felt irritated and flinched arrows at Jatayu.
But the lord of sky-rovers
began flapping his enormous wings.
The flapping stirred up so much dust
that a whipped storm
beat the arrows back.