“Or I can wait for the future to approach me,” Rama replied, deliberately being difficult in order to test the man’s patience and character. “Time catches up with the idle and the active alike.”
A twitch of a smile on the man’s sculpted dark face. “Not here,” he said. “Not in Lokaloka. Here, Time is an absent master.”
Lokaloka? What place was that? And how could Time be absent from anyplace? Even dreams must begin and end and therefore served temporal laws. Unless…unless…But he could think of no satisfactory explanation. He was out of his depth here. And the rakshak knew it.
“Then tell me something,” Rama said. “Give me some reason to go up that…mountain?” If it was a mountain indeed. He felt he could be sure of nothing here. In Lokaloka. Wherever…whatever…that might be. He waited, feeling the mist nipping at his bare feet, not cold or wet, merely…wind. “What lies up there?”
“The answers to all your questions,” said the man.
Rama stared at him. Of all the responses he might have expected, that was not one. He found he could think of nothing else to say.
The rakshak began walking up the sloping rise into the swirling mist, and Rama followed.
Sita swung around to stare at a strange man standing behind them. He was dark-skinned, the same deep bluish hue like Rama, but apart from that, there was no resemblance. His eyes were inscrutable, either brown or black though she could not see them clearly enough to tell which. His hair was long, much longer than Rama’s – almost as long as her own – and raven-black with that same bluish tinge as his skin. Rama’s hair was simply jet-black. He appeared to be standing in shadow, presumably the shadow of the sala tree that compelled the raj-marg to wind around this grassy ridge overlooking the river, but the sun was at the wrong angle and sunlight fell all around him like a great golden shroud. Sita felt her mouth open in a small o as she saw that the man cast no shadow. She pressed her lips together firmly. The man stood at least a head taller than even Hanuman, and his dark hair framing his sculpted face, the white flowing anga-vastra that covered him from neck to ankle, and the shadow-like dimness that shielded him from clear sight despite the bright late morning sunshine, all lent him an alien air.
Yet she knew that he was no asura. There was no sense of menace, no hint of threat. He meant them no harm, she was certain. Yet he was not entirely their benefactor either. He wanted something from them. What? Her heart was already cold with the things she had just heard and seen, her mind swimming with possibilities and speculation.
She gestured to the Vortal below, raising her voice above the roar of the river to be heard. “You opened that…window…into that other Ayodhya?”
The stranger inclined his head. He had powerful neck muscles, like a bull, and when he lowered his head, his entire torso bulged with muscular strength. He looked like he could fell the sala tree by charging at it a time or two. “Vortal. Yes.”
“What?”
“It is called a Vortal, more a doorway than a window. And yes, I performed the ritual necessary to open it. In fact—”
Sita waved him quiet. “Why?”
He looked at her. “If you will permit me to explain in my own manner and pace, Rani Sita Janaki?”
Her cheeks burned hotly. “If one is to be polite, then one should also know whom one is addressing and the proper manner of that address?”
He nodded graciously. “Quite true. As queen of this kingdom, you are owed a formal introduction. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Yama.”
Sita’s blood ran cold.
The stranger went on quite calmly and politely: “My father was Vivasvat, my mother Saranya. I am both a Lokapala and an Aditya. Like your illustrious husband in this life, I take my lineage from Surya the sun. I am entrusted with guarding the cardinal direction South. In other lands I am variously known as Shinje, Yanluowang, Yan, enma Dai-O or Yamadipati, and other names. I am often mistakenly depicted garbed in red attire, with green or red skin, but in fact this is my natural colouring, black with a bluish tinge like Rama, for the brahman shakti within my veins glows even through this crow-black skin. I prefer to wear white for just as black is sacred and the colour of Aryas and devas, so also white marks the absence of colour, and therefore the absence of life. After all, I am also the Lord of Death. But mainly I am known as the Lord of Dharma. I am Yama.”
Sita was speechless.
He waited a moment then smiled briefly and went on. “Let me assure you that I mean neither yourself nor any of your loved ones any harm. I do not visit you this day in my capacity as a reaper of souls. I come instead as an ally.”
“An ally?”
“Yes. I am in a quandary, you see. It is rare that I find myself confronted by a question I cannot find an answer to, considering that I have access to unlimited resources and infinite time and archives containing all things known and unknown about the Universe – all universes, in fact. Neither I, nor Yami my intrepid sister, nor even Chitragupta my munshi seem to be able to find a case that matches the circumstances of this one. Therefore I find myself in the unusual situation of having to create a new law rather than simply execute an existing statute.”
Sita’s head swam. “I don’t understand…”
He nodded. “Of course. I am rambling as usual. Please, allow me to explain through a simple demonstration…”
He walked towards her. She took a step backwards, instinctively, then another, and suddenly felt the ground crumbling away beneath her heels. She realized what she was doing and stepped forward again, turning to see a patch of loose earth crumbling down the several yards to the riverbank. Rama’s hands were stretched out, ready to grasp her, but she shook her head and he withdrew. She felt the rakshak come up behind them, and then pass her.
Yama walked out across thin air, over the river, then stopped.
He glanced down. “You’ll pardon me. Not being bound by the physical laws of this particular plane, I am accustomed to manipulating matter as I please.”
Sita said nothing.
Yama gestured at the Vortal. Sita noted that the arched window – or doorway – had once more turned opaque and into a shimmering glaze that reflected rainbow hues. The scene that they had witnessed earlier had vanished.
“As you have seen, this particular Vortal opens onto an Ayodhya similar in almost all aspects to your own. The essential differences are the events that transpired there this day. In your Ayodhya, you have woken late this morning, and almost immediately been brought here by Maruti Anjaneya to this spot to view this phenomenon. In fact, I placed the Vortal here knowing that Hanuman watches this ingress to the city as closely as a mother wolf guards the entrance to her den and that he would quickly spy it and report it to you discreetly, without raising a general alarm.”
Hanuman inclined his snout thoughtfully as he absorbed this information.
“Yet at the same time the Vortal itself was placed in such a location that no idle passerby was likely to notice it. Nor can any creature of the forest slip through it.”
Yama gestured at the Vortal and once again the shimmering rainbow hues coalesced to reveal the scene they had seen earlier: Rama and Sita facing Lord Shiva, with Ravana at Shiva’s feet, and Atikaya and Valmiki looking on. “But in the Ayodhya which you viewed through the Vortal earlier, a great deal happened since this morning. And continues to happen…”
“What do you mean, Rama?” Sita asked, staring at her husband. “Why should we be parted for any reason? Do you mean…” Her breath caught in her throat. “Ravana—”
He shook his head. “No. You shall not be abducted again, or taken from me by force. But yes, it is true, we shall be parted, this time forever.”
“Forever?” The word shocked her, stunned her more than the blow struck by Atikaya with the moon-sword Chandrahas. It sent reverberations into her soul, shaking her to the core.
Rama lowered his head. “The rest of this mortal lifespan. It may as well be forever.”
“But why? How? Who will part us? W
hy shall we let them? Why would you permit it to happen?”
He kept his head lowered, his eyes hooded. “I am the one who shall dismiss you into exile.”
“Into…” She was speechless. “Rama, listen to yourself. What are you saying? You have just fought and won a terrible war, invading a foreign land, destroying an entire race of beings, in order to win me back from a monster,” She gestured in Ravana’s direction, “after we both suffered 14 years in exile for no fault or wrongdoing of our own. No power on earth could cause you to exile me.” She laughed. “It is absurd. It is unspeakably ludicrous. A jest, surely!”
Rama remained silent.
She looked from him to Ravana, whose heads were still bowed, his knees bent at the foot of his master. She looked up at Shiva himself. The Lord of Destruction did not meet her gaze. Even the serpent Takshak had lowered his hood and appeared to be asleep or resting. She turned the other way and saw Atikaya slumped in a morose crouch, lost in his own miserable thoughts. Only Maharishi Valmiki stood straight and tall, gazing at her in sympathy as well as naked curiosity.
“Gurudev,” she said to him. “You arrived here this morning in Ayodhya to avert a crisis, you said earlier. You mentioned a prophecy. Was this what you meant? This absurdity?”
Valmiki frowned. “I do not know for certain. But yes, it may well be. All I was told was that the House of Raghu would be divided. And that the sons of the Suryavansha Ikshwaku line would be in great need of my guidance and aid.”
Sita turned back to Rama. “Explain.”
Rama’s head remained lowered.
She reached out and punched him in the chest. Lightly. Yet hard enough to get his attention.
“Explain!”
He looked up slowly. The expression on his face terrified her. Never before had Rama looked at her in that manner.
“What would you have me explain?” he said in a tone so deathly quiet that it chilled her to the marrow. “The fact that you and your father Janaka chose to deceive my family and me all this while? Did you think that we would not learn the truth eventually? Did you think everything would be as before? That we would live happily ever after together, in blissful denial of the truth of your identity and your condition?”
She was stunned. The sheer loathing in his voice shocked her. Never before had Rama spoken to her thus. Never had he looked at her with such vile menace. Never had he said such harsh things to her.
“What…what do you mean?” she stammered.
He sniffed. “There is little point in denying it now, Sitey,” he said, using the formal ‘ey’ suffix as was common among long-married Arya couples. Even that tiny formality hurt her deeply. Janaki, Maithili, Vaidehi – even Ayodhyi of all names – was fine, was affectionate even. But to call her Sitey like this at such a moment, was further insult. Looking at his face with rising dismay, she realized he had meant it as such. “What am I denying, Rama?” she said shakily. “At least tell me that. I’m merely asking.”
He stared at her a moment in silence. A brief fraction of time, barely the space between heartbeats. But in that sliver of a moment she realized that he was already lost to her. She had been declared the loser in a battle to which she had not even been invited, without knowing what was at stake, or why.
“You are not the true daughter of Maharaja Janaka of Mithila. He only adopted you and raised you as his own, among his three true daughters. You are in fact the blood-daughter of Ravana himself,” Rama said in that same deathly quiet tone. “You are pregnant with Ravana’s grandchildren. It is the reason why you left me and went with him of your own free will to Lanka, to live there henceforth and raise the twins as rakshasas, in the lineage of their forefathers. Do you deny any of these facts?”
He waited for his answer with a cold expression that could not have been worse had he held a sword to the pulsating vein in her throat.
ELEVEN
“What is this?” Sita said in a choked voice. “What is this?”
She turned to stare at Rama who was standing silently, staring ahead at the Vortal.
“Rama, I don’t understand what we are watching.”
Rama was staring transfixed at the scene taking place beyond the Vortal, at the other Rama who waited for his Sita’s answer.
“Rama!”
With an effort he tore his eyes away. He glanced at Sita, then away, at Hanuman, then up at the sky, the treeline, around at the densely overgrown outreaches of the sala tree that blocked the view of the raj-marg. He sucked in a deep breath before finally turning back to Sita.
“What do you wish me to say?”
She gestured at the Vortal, at Lord Yama who stood calmly upon thin air. “I do not understand this. It is some kind of god-game. It scares me. I wish to see no more. Please ask him to stop and shut up that doorway at once!”
Rama glanced at Yama who offered no response, verbal or otherwise. “I think he means that we must watch this.”
“Why?” Sita calmed herself, lowering her voice to speak in a more controlled but no less urgent tone. “It is unnerving, to say the least. Deeply unsettling. To see those figures that resemble us so closely, speaking, acting, debating as if they were speaking on our behalf. Like actors in some theatrical performance performed on a feast night!”
Rama put a hand on her shoulder, reassuring, gentle. “But they are us. Not actors, not people who resemble us.” He turned her around gently to face the Vortal once more. “That is you. And that is me.”
She shook her head, refusing to look at it again, refusing to believe. “That is absurd. Impossible. We are here, see? This is you, and this is me.” She slipped a hand around his waist, embracing him, resting her head against his chest. “We are real, flesh and blood. Not phantom visions viewed through an illusionist’s glass.”
Yama chuckled softly, the sound rendered curiously pleasing by his deep baritone, undercutting the roar of the river. “An illusionist. Is that what I am?”
Rama raised a hand. “She means no disrespect, Dharmarajan.”
Yama waved his objection away. “None taken. She is upset. That is only to be expected. And she is not entirely wrong. This is an illusion at present. One conjured up by an ingenious combination of brahman shakti along with a deft manipulation of the laws of the universe.” He sighed. “It would seem more real if I were to ask you to step through the Vortal.”
Hanuman started. “But, sire, you said no creature could pass through that doorway!”
“My good Maruti Anjaneya, I said I placed it in such a spot that would make it highly unlikely that any creature in this world could pass through. It is most definitely possible to pass through the Vortal. That is its whole purpose and the reason why it is named so. It is a portal of sorts, but one that is directly linked with countless other similar portals – a vertical integration, as it shall be termed in future ages – and any being passing through a Vortal in their world must maintain the Balance.”
“The Balance?” The vanar inclined his head quizzically.
“The Balance is the inescapable law that governs the infinite worlds of the Vortal. It states that the quantum of matter in any world, or all worlds, must remain exactly the same, neither increasing nor decreasing, merely changing form. Think of the Vortal as a series of doorways connecting an infinite number of chambers in a great house. There is a certain number of beings in each chamber. That number always remains the same. So if one being steps from one chamber into a second chamber, another being from that chamber must step into the first chamber to take the first being’s place. Do you follow now?”
The vanar nodded slowly. “And so if I pass through this Vortal?” he pointed at the glassy archway above the Sarayu with a shudder that made clear his question was merely rhetorical and that he feared passing through the supernatural doorway more than anything else, “a being from that world must pass through into this one, to take my place?”
“Indeed,” Yamadev said, visibly pleased at Hanuman’s quick grasp of the concept. “But not merely
any being. Hanuman himself. Your counterpart in that world.”
Hanuman’s golden eyes widened, filling with shock as he contemplated the possibility of another Hanuman beyond that doorway and what that implied. “And there are infinite worlds connected by such Vortals?”
“Infinite,” Yama agreed. “One could go on crossing from Vortal to Vortal without ever reaching an end. Of course, there is an end to the number, but what makes it impossible to count them through in reality is the complication that results from physically crossing over. Each time any being crosses over through the Vortal from their world to another world, the worlds themselves change in subtle, unpredictable ways. Therefore, while we may compute the number of possible worlds reachable through the Vortal and arrive at a finite number quite definitively, in actual practice, we can never confirm that number because each time we attempt to verify it by passing through the Vortal, we alter the Balance and a chain effect results, altering all the known worlds in unknowable ways.”
Hanuman scratched the back of his head. “Yet surely if we have a hand’s worth of bananas, then whether the bananas turn rotten or ripe or raw, there should still be a hand’s worth, no more, no less, should there not?” The vanar held up one hand to show five fur-backed digits.
Yama nodded. “Very astutely noted, Anjaneya. Yet that is the difference between the Vortal and the natural universe. You see, the Vortal itself possesses energy, and that energy is also a part of Creation within which the Vortal exists. Therefore, merely passing through the Vortal, changes the very meaning of a hand’s worth,” Yama raised one hand, showing five digits again, then wiggled his fingers till they became seven, then four, then eight, then six. He waggled the hand one more time, and the fingers changed back to five as before. “The Vortal alters the very nature of reality itself. Or perhaps it only alters the perception of reality as viewed by a sentient living being. Either way, the result is the same: The Balance remains inscrutable and immutable. We cannot manipulate it or play with it in any fashion. It is the one fixed constant in the infinite worlds of the Vortal. Every being must obey the Law of Balance. So if this Rama and Sita,” Yamadev indicated the King and Queen of Ayodhya, standing with arms around each other’s waists, listening silently through the exchange, “were to cross through the Vortal, then that Rama and Sita we see there shall have no choice but to cross over into this world. Except that the very act of passing through the Vortal shall alter both Ramas and both Sitas, for such an enormous flux of energy cannot but alter the universe in some way be it ever so subtle or grossly obvious.”
RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA Page 27