Ramayana

by Daljit Nagra

  and scuttling or quarried squeaky or soundless

  thingybobs …

  After circling the globe several times

  over several non-stop hours

  the duelling chariots resumed fighting

  back in Lanka.

  Till eventually a breakthrough:

  Rama’s arrows so awesome they pierced Raavana’s armour.

  Raavana winced and was forced to change tactics,

  not now merely shooting arrows,

  he called on the Astras, the supernatural forces,

  to create weird effects. Rama could only imitate.

  Raavana now stood atop a peak

  and summoned from the far ends his deadliest weapon:

  a trident that matched Death’s kill trajectory.

  It was once gifted to Raavana by the gods!

  Yes, the gods, who watched a tad shame-faced.

  The trident could be heard whooping through abysms

  and furthest cosmic ice-zones.

  The noise was booming and the earth heating!

  Rama uttered mantras

  and realised one that turned the trident to dust.

  The dust was thicker than a thousand mountains

  and plugged the sea where it fell.

  ‘These are but kitchen pussy-footing utensils,’

  yelled Raavana, who had tools galore.

  He summoned an old gift, from Shiva, called Danda.

  It was a comet that could zone on its target.

  Target located:

  instant explosion.

  Raavana summoned the doolally Danda …

  The gods feared for Rama.

  This could be it for boy wonder.

  No chance! Rama’s super-fired arrows,

  so many and so boosted,

  met mid-air the Danda:

  full on explosion

  blown into space!

  Raavana brewed up Maya itself.

  Maya created illusions that confused Rama.

  Maya had apparently returned all Raavana’s army.

  Charging towards Rama came some shy and retiring types.

  Presently Rama watched all that once were belly-up

  now armed

  and stampeding at him.

  Rama pleaded to his charioteer, Matali,

  ‘What is happening?’

  Said Matali, ‘You know it not? You create all illusions.

  You make dreams and dream-stuff

  such as aught from envy to poetry.

  Raavana has created phantoms to foil you

  whilst you are a mortal. If at all you are doubting yourself

  or weakening from your mantras: Maya kills you!’

  Rama sat in pure focus and sought

  the Naama, or wisdom fused with perception,

  a super-rare rarely, if ever, usable weapon.

  Rama held firm

  and not a single negative distracting thought for a blink

  entered.

  It was as if Rama was vanishing from flesh into

  one-compacted-atom-thought.

  Raavana’s phantom crew was murderous breathing upon Rama

  when Rama summoned Naama.

  Naama instantly emptied the air of

  Maya’s hurtling maniacs!

  Raavana was convinced his Maya would mash up Rama.

  He was sickened. He thought, who is Rama?

  Not Shiva, for Shiva is my ally.

  He could not be Brahma, who is four-faced,

  and he is not Vishnu

  for I am immune generally from the holy trinity.

  Perhaps he is the primordial being.

  The cause behind the universe?

  Death’s elation would be to uncover

  the spring, the source.

  What then if I beat it?

  Would I be killing myself in killing the source of creation?

  Raavana went back to his mental kitchen, as it were.

  He remained unfazed by Rama. Unfazed by death.

  He focused again and unleashed an effect known as Thama.

  Thama spun out arrows that orchestrated

  darkness everywhere.

  Thamas flew out from near Raavana’s body.

  Each Thama had a head that spat up fangs and fiery tongues.

  In no time, not a candle was lit in any nook.

  But more, total darkness emptied all worlds.

  All worlds! Starless end-to-end darkness.

  Creation paralysed.

  Amidst the darkness

  rain deluge on one side

  and stone-pour on the other.

  Darkness and stone pelting in absolute torrent.

  Add to this torrent tornadoes sweeping

  the earth with hail-storms!

  All earth, all cosmos was now near kaput.

  In thickest thunder, storm and darkness

  Rama was crouched in a cave

  praying

  summoning all sorts of remarkable forces

  that the greatest sages would have barely imagined imaginable.

  Still Rama and the cosmos were dying.

  Somehow Rama survived those rocks

  that tore at his cheeks? In surviving, he somehow focused

  to summon a Shivasthra.

  A Shivasthra understands the general apocalyptic mania

  thriving in a Thama

  so was able to annul Thama. Annul Thama in a stroke

  as though the world’s end had come and gone!

  Apocalypse abated and refulgence returned,

  though many rare ones became extinct.

  Raavana reacted with rage at this defeat.

  He came down from his mountainous perch –

  roaring at Rama on the battleground

  by blindly emptying endless arrows at him.

  Rama’s arrows met Raavana’s arrows halfway

  and turned them all round

  so they stacked in Raavana’s chest!

  So they stacked in Raavana’s chest.

  Chapter Ten: Ample Head over Heart lacking

  Rama seeks a way to kill Raavana.

  Rama went for the death

  calmly slicing off Raavana’s heads,

  one by one, hurling them into the ocean!

  Rama’s blade thundered as it sliced

  each dense-as-Time boon-bolstered head

  YET

  soon after lopping each exhausting head

  Rama observed an exact-dense head

  sprouting back on Raavana’s neck!

  Each grown-back head threw up

  foul-worded dares at Rama

  but Rama calmly kept at his lumberjacking.

  A hundred mighty heads fallen

  and a hundred were back on

  till eventually Raavana weakening …

  fainted.

  Matali whispered to Rama,

  ‘Finish him for good now. It is all over!’

  But Rama panting, ‘It is unfair in combat

  to attack a man who has fainted. I will let him recover.

  Mareecha, Kara, Indrajit and Koombarkana were killed

  but how do I end Raavana’s career?’

  Matali, who was the god’s charioteer

  and used to battles, simply said, ‘Raavana will grow

  heads endless. You must now use the Brahmastra.’

  When Raavana was back on his feet

  he took out his sword, crying at his charioteer,

  ‘Why did you pull us away?

  The gods will think I showed fear.’

  Said the tearful charioteer,

  ‘But Lord, Rama stopped fighting.

  Our horses needed shade from the sun’s rays.

  My life, my duty is to your kind love.’

  ‘I am glad you serve me, would you take this?’

  Raavana awarded his charioteer

  a gem-encrusted bracelet given him by the gods.

  With his chest already healed

  Raavana lifted his many swords

&nbs
p; charging wildly at Rama

  but Rama slapped all his swords cleanly away.

  With nothing left to lose, Raavana threw

  whatever came to hand

  whether it be staves, cast-iron balls or boulders.

  Pleaded Matali, ‘O Lord, he is becoming mighty again!

  Could he war once more?

  You must try summoning the Brahmastra.’

  Rama worried about using this weapon originated by Brahma.

  It was only to be used in the final event.

  The shaft of the arrow bore the essence of the skies.

  It was heavy as Mount Meru

  and contained the combined energy of all beings.

  Along annihilation’s path it could spray up

  mountains and oceans innumerable.

  If not used correct on the battlefield

  it could blank all in its path from east to west as it went.

  It was Yama’s role model, for sure.

  It needed masterful sorcery-calling

  and could only be summoned by one once in a lifetime.

  Rama was fending off

  Raavana’s lumbering

  lumpen weapons

  as he began his chant.

  He chanted for the Brahmastra

  nursing it concentratedly into its cleanest perceivable aim.

  All creation sat up for a second

  and Raavana’s ears pricked at a whizzing spear.

  A fire hearse bombing through the billion galaxies

  with all their ordered and remiss back-rooms and chambers

  that formed the furthest span of the universe.

  Raavana knew he was hearing the Brahmastra

  clearing past the cosmic ceiling

  and already clearing the mountains

  and already booming for his heart

  and he knew he was vulnerable

  at heart

  (something he had never sought protection for)

  and the Brahmastra had already plunged him

  into the blue

  then burst him back

  colossal up towards the stars

  and the spatial doom

  before he was speared back down to earth

  upon the furrowed routes

  with a black gap

  a black gap chasming his chest. His smithereen heart.

  In all the worlds, to all the gods from distant times

  it must have been implausible

  a god could be razed by a mortal.

  Inconceivable that Raavana could not be inviolable.

  Raavana’s hefty crowns and jewellery

  scattered pell-mell about his black-as-collyrium body.

  Chapter Eleven: Duty

  Vibishana and Mandodari mourn.

  Even in victory Lord Rama was pure

  forgiveness. When Vibishana, so overwhelmed with grief,

  pulled up a blade and was about to cut off his own head

  Rama spoke through sighs,

  ‘Is there a home for hatred

  after death has blown off the roof?

  O bravest of all, Vibishana, your brother is now

  our brother. We must honour him a funeral

  so his spirit may course

  for its place in heaven.

  Will you not serve him, now?’

  Vibishana was crowded with tears as he whispered,

  ‘What might he

  have achieved?’

  Mandodari ran to the battlefield

  and fell upon her lord’s body sobbing.

  Mandodari called blindly aloud,

  ‘Is all joy now gone

  and we are manacled to the millstone?

  My Lord, do you leave me

  no sign?

  In our lives to come

  how will you know me?’

  Mandodari fainted deep into a dream lane.

  Chapter Twelve: Let’s have a Cak Party calling it Diwali!

  Rama, Sita and Lakshmana return to Ayodhya.

  Fourteen years had elapsed and Rama returned

  at the spot, on the dot: Ayodhya.

  He was a hero bringing home

  a millennium reign of peace.

  King Sugreeva, King Vibishana and Jambavan

  made the long journey north to honour the king of all kings.

  The journey to the palace was already lit

  from every house and yard of the path with candles

  and red cloth was draped from door to door along the streets.

  Rama’s mothers and Bharat were at the palace gates

  so the golden slippers on the throne meet the lord.

  Alongside them waiting was Rama’s favourite elephant,

  Shatrunjaya, already prostrated.

  Dancing troupes wore khon-masks

  for demons and heroes

  or wore simple cottons

  and were caught in the Cak dance – the trance dance

  where a male choir hummed

  ecak-ecak-ecak-ecak-ecak

  and dancers mimed the already infamous abduction of Sita

  and Rama’s victory

  to which the capital cheered.

  The capital overcome and ready to party, alright.

  Let’s have a party calling it Diwali.

  Home and at the palace gates … at last Rama was free,

  free to act of his own accord. A king with the trappings

  of power. But first,

  queen would finally meet her king.

  But where was Sita? And why had Rama not met her

  after victory in Lanka?

  Why had Sita been flown from the battle scene to Ayodhya

  in Hanuman’s chariot?

  And why now, here, finally, was Sita being escorted

  before the palace gates? And before Rama in public?

  And at last Rama looking in Sita’s direction,

  looking at her as though for the first time

  surely?

  Yet Rama did not look as foot-rooted by Sita

  as he had been on their first ever

  encounter

  when he had been struck by the vision on its balcony.

  Rama raised a hand to

  calm the jubilant gathering.

  All awaited Rama’s speech.

  Rama only said,

  ‘I want everyone to observe my reunion.

  Please, Hanuman, bring down

  Sita from her palanquin.’

  Sita blushed

  at being exposed

  in this public way.

  She held at the tip of her fingers the

  RAMA-inscribed wedding ring for its elated return.

  Sita’s fawn eyes looked at Rama’s hands:

  they saw there no Choodamani.

  Rama’s hands pointed down to the grooved earth.

  He spoke not courtly but court-like with his wife

  in full view,

  ‘Blessings on your salvation.

  Our mission has been accomplished.

  You have been freed from suffering.’

  ‘You never left my heart,

  how could I suffer, Lord?’

  Rama, still not looking at Sita for it would be a looking into

  light.

  He continued his judgement, ‘After all this

  this residence

  far from your rightful home

  I must tell you, as you will know,

  it is not in our custom

  committing back to the marital contract

  a wife

  who has been resident

  elsewhere, in a stranger’s home.

  I have executed

  what any man must.

  I have wiped out

  dishonour’s stain.’

  Rama looked broken. In two.

  ‘Everyone here has seen I do not touch

  you.

  There can be no question of our

  living together.

  I leave you

  free

  to go wherever you p
lease. Look about you:

  ten directions or more where you can be free.

  I grant freedom to you there.’

  Sita stood thunderbolted.

  The crowd stunned. Yet the lord was brave to act correct

  and not appear henpecked or a fool to take back a wife

  so heavily desired by another man

  whose house she had stayed alive in.

  Correct indeed, Lord.

  Almost to herself, ‘Why peril the earth?

  Why not send word with Hanuman …