by Ramesh Menon
At dawn, Bharata came to Bharadvaja and said, “My lord, as long as they live my people will remember your hospitality. But now we must press on and find my brother. I am afraid that not even the company of gandharvas and apsaras can long assuage Ayodhya’s grief at being parted from Rama.”
The rishi described the way to Chitrakuta, exactly as he had done for Rama. He said, “I have heard he has built an asrama near the Mandakini.”
Dasaratha’s queens came before the rishi for his blessing. They walked around him in pradakshina and stood without speaking, their heads bent and their hands folded.
Bharadvaja said, “Bharata, tell me which queen is which prince’s mother.”
Bharata went to Kausalya and put his arm around her. “This is my mother Kausalya, who bore the noblest man ever born into the world. And this is mother Sumitra, who bore the mighty twins Lakshmana and Shatrughna.”
He did not go near Kaikeyi; he did not look at her. He said stiffly, “My father, Dasaratha, died because of a woman he loved like his very life. Out of her greed, she parted him from his eldest son. Oh, she is gentle and feminine to behold; but she is a devil. The third one, whose eyes are dry, who has not shed a tear these past days for her dead husband, is my mother Kaikeyi.”
And the prince heaved a sigh. Bharadvaja laid a hand on Bharata’s arm. “The ways of fate are inscrutable, my son. Do not judge your mother so harshly. I can see far into time and I tell you there is a deep purpose behind Rama’s exile. The Devas, the rishis, all the hosts of heaven and the races of the earth will profit from it one day. And the clutch of evil shall be loosened for an age. Yet great suffering must go before any great deed, and your mother is only an unwitting instrument of destiny. The way ahead is long; don’t be hasty with your judgment.”
The army took a while to prepare itself for the march ahead; the people were still intoxicated with the night’s magic. But once they thought of Rama, they were soon on their way. Through darkling forests and over fragrant hills they marched, following the Yamuna and fording other jungle streams. Bharata sensed his brother ahead of him; he saw Rama’s trail clearly with his heart: a golden path.
On they marched, and the denizens of the wild were alarmed by the invasion of their privacy. Such a force had never come into this jungle before. Herds of deer scampered up steep hills, calling in alarm. Elephants stopped their lazy feeding to stare and then lumbered away, crashing through bamboo thickets. And overhead, another legion followed the army of Ayodhya, chattering down its displeasure: the langur tribes.
When they had marched some krosas along the southern bank of the midnight-blue Yamuna, when they had left the lone nyagrodha, Shyama, behind them, they came to the edge of a forest more dense than any they had seen yet, and dark as a thundercloud. Out of its heart there loomed a green massif. Its slopes were mantled with wildflowers, fallen like vivid rain from the trees; its rock faces were gashed with silver falls. A scented breeze blew down from that mountain and caressed them as if in welcome.
Bharata breathed, “Chitrakuta!”
A smile lit his face and Shatrughna’s when they heard the Mandakini gushing downhill in the distance. They knew that in a few hours, all their torment would be redressed them: for they would see their brother Rama.
Shatrughna cried, “Send our best trackers ahead to find his asrama quickly!”
30. A reunion of brothers
Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana sat on the banks of the Mandakini. Sita dangled her feet in the water, while, near them and quite unafraid, a herd of deer drank from a pool in the river. The day was wearing on. They had grown used to the peace of Chitrakuta and the sorrow of exile did not weigh on their minds any more. The mountain surroundings of their little asrama were so picturesque it was impossible to be unhappy for long in that place.
But this afternoon, they heard alarmed trumpeting and heavy bodies crashing through the jungle. It was a herd of wild elephants trying to gain the higher reaches of Chitrakuta, as if they fled from some implacable enemy. Trampling down banks of bamboo, toppling small trees and crashing clumsily into bigger ones, the herd scrambled up the mountain. The great beasts splashed across the river, downstream from where the princes and Sita sat, and lumbered like a passing earthquake into the thick forest beyond.
Sita and the princes saw flocks of birds rise screaming out of the forest below them and wheel in the sky. They heard the incensed chattering of langur troops. The deer, which drank peacefully at their side, now cocked their heads and listened tensely to the cries of the other jungle folk. Calling sharply, they, too, fled up the mountain.
Rama said to Lakshmana, “Can you see what all the panic is about? I think a king must have come to hunt in the forest.”
Lakshmana shinned up a tall sala tree. When he looked east, he saw the army of Ayodhya below him. He saw the banner of Kosala, flown by Bharata’s vanguard, flapping in the mountain breeze. He cried down from the tree, “Sita, hide! Rama, put out the asrama fire. Put on your armor; pick up your bow: danger is here!”
He clambered down feverishly and stood panting. Rama smiled at him and asked, “Who is coming, Lakshmana, that you are so alarmed?”
“The one who had you banished. Bharata has come with an army to make his throne secure. My astras are sad with disuse, Rama; they long to be buried in that traitor’s heart. The scavengers of our jungle will feast for a year on the carcasses of his men.”
Rama said, “So now you would have me kill my brother for the throne of Ayodhya. I know you speak out of love for me; but you should not abandon your good sense. You think Bharata comes to kill us. But he has convinced our father that the kingdom belongs to me. He comes to offer me the crown and take me back to Ayodhya. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing in his place? Why do you think he loves me less than you do? Do you believe Bharata would betray me for a mere kingdom? Don’t doubt him like this; it hurts me.”
He paused; but anger was on him, and he said softly, “Perhaps the truth is that you want the kingdom yourself? I will tell Bharata to give it to you and to stay with me in the forest. You will see how readily he agrees. How can you be so suspicious, Lakshmana? This is our brother of whom you speak.”
For a moment Lakshmana stood stricken; then, in the manner of a child, he changed the subject. “It must be our father coming to visit us, Rama.”
Rama stood up to examine the approaching force. “Perhaps you are right. I see his favorite horses, and there is Shatrunjaya. But I cannot see the king’s white parasol. Let us go back to the asrama. It is time for sandhya, and they are still an hour’s climb away.”
Even as they peered down at it, the army paused under the trees. Bharata had called the halt in deference to Rama’s privacy. His trackers had come back to him in excitement. They pointed to a slope above them, and a strip of level ground upon it.
“There, my lord,” said their leader. “If you look carefully you will see smoke rising into the sky. It could be the asrama of some tapasvins; but I think we have found Rama.”
Bharata ordered his commanders, “Stay here until you hear from me. Sumantra and Guha, come with us, and a few trackers.”
Shatrughna was already off up the slope and Bharata had to run to catch up with him. Guha went another way with some of his men. When he had gone a krosa, Bharata climbed a lofty sala. He saw the asrama, with the thrill of a sailor who spots land from his crow’s nest.
He sent word back to Kausalya and Sumitra to follow carefully in their wake. With Guha, Shatrughna, and Sumantra, keen as anyone else to see Rama again, Bharata climbed on as quickly as he could. In the more level places, they ran up the mountain beside the cool Mandakini, until they arrived in a clearing in which there stood a cozy wooden cottage made of sala and asvakarna logs, thatched with leaves, with darbha grass spread at its door in welcome.
Through the window, Bharata saw Rama and Lakshmana’s bows, inlaid with gold—Varuna’s weapons—and beside them, quivers in which arrows shone like treasure. Across from the cottage was a
raised platform where a fire burned. From here, the smoke they had seen rose into a clear sky. Before that fire, his eyes shut and his face tranquil, Rama sat at sandhya prayer with Sita beside him. Lakshmana stood by, with his back to Bharata’s party and his arms crossed over his chest.
For a long moment, Bharata stood staring at the extraordinary sight of Rama, bare of his ornaments, wearing valkala, his hair coiled in jata, and sitting on darbha grass: at worship, like Brahma. Then his eyes swam, and with a cry, stumbling and falling on the way, he ran headlong to his brother.
“Rama!” Shatrughna also fell at Rama’s feet. Rama raised them up tenderly and embraced them over and over again. Then Lakshmana was among them. Now he saw his brother before him, as he was and not as he had imagined him in his anger; and he remembered how much he loved Bharata. Rama made Bharata sit close to him, and welcomed Guha and Sumantra warmly, embracing them too.
Then he asked, “Bharata, why are you in the jungle, wearing valkala and jata? You should not have left our father alone. Tell me how he is, and how are our mothers? How is Guru Vasishta? And Sudhanva? I have thought of him often lately.”
Bharata stared at Rama, drinking in the sight of his dark face. He turned away after a moment, and said only, “It has never been the way of the Ikshvakus that a younger brother rules the kingdom while his older brother lives. Come back to orphaned Ayodhya, Rama; it languishes without a king.”
“But child, Dasaratha still rules Ayodhya. Why do you speak of a future that has not yet come to pass?”
Bharata turned his eyes to his brother in anguish, and cried, “Dasaratha no longer rules Ayodhya. Dasaratha died of a broken heart.”
Rama keeled over. Sita ran to fetch water, and Bharata and Lakshmana sprinkled it on Rama’s face. But for a long time, he lay where he had fallen.
When he awoke, he sobbed helplessly. “I thought I would return to Ayodhya when fourteen years had passed, and take the dust from my father’s feet. Now you tell me he is dead. And I was not there even to offer tarpana for him. Bharata, I will never come back to Ayodhya. Whose voice will I hear calling my name as Dasaratha used to, with such love? Whose arms will enfold me, as his always did?”
Rama lost control of himself. He turned to Sita and cried, “Did you hear what Bharata said? The king is dead. Lakshmana, you have lost your father!” And he sobbed and sobbed.
At last, Bharata said, “Rama, you must offer tarpana for him. Shatrughna and I performed the anjali in Ayodhya. But I know his soul will not find rest until you offer him holy water.”
Rama grew calm; he wiped his eyes. In a moment, he said quietly to Lakshmana, “Bring me a cloth to cover my body; fetch me some ingudi. I will offer tarpana to my father.”
When the cloth and the humble cake of dry fruit were brought, Rama said, “Sita, you walk in front. Lakshmana, you go behind her and I will follow. Let us go to the river.”
From over the crest of the mountain the last rays of the sun fell, scarlet and golden, on the quiet Mandakini. Restraining his grief, Rama stood solemnly, waist deep in the water. Facing south, he raised his arms above his head. He said aloud, “Father, you have been gathered to our ancestors in Pitriloka. Quench your journey’s thirst with this water.”
He came out of the river and made the offering of pinda. He broke the ingudi cake, ground it with the flesh of a badari fruit, and set the pinda down on a seat of darbha grass that Lakshmana prepared. He said, “A man’s Gods should accept the food he eats. We now eat this fruit in the name of our father, Dasaratha of Ikshvaku. Gods in heaven, be gracious and accept our offering.”
The four brothers ate the fruit and embraced one another. Then, with their arms linked, the princes of Ayodhya returned to the asrama as night fell.
31. A question of dharma
Shortly after the princes left the banks of the Mandakini, Vasishta arrived there with the two elder widows of Ayodhya. Kaikeyi had stayed far behind in the forest, her mind a sad fire. By the light of torches that the trackers held above their heads, they saw a faint trail at their feet. Kausalya said, “Look, Sumitra. It is the path Lakshmana has made when he carries water to the asrama.”
They saw the simple pinda Rama had offered to the spirit of his dead father. Kausalya stifled a sob, “Look where the eldest son offered pinda to his father. Dasaratha, who lived like a God on earth, must now be content with a pinda of ingudi and badari.”
Wiping her eyes, Sumitra said quietly, “And he shall be content for the one who offered it.”
They followed Lakshmana’s trail, and arrived at the asrama. Rama and Lakshmana came out to meet their mothers. Kausalya clasped Sita in her arms and fondled her as if she were her own daughter. Like Indra greeting Brihaspati, Rama knelt at Vasishta’s feet; the rishi raised him up and embraced him.
Their grief binding them closer than ever, they sat together around a fire Lakshmana lit outside the log cottage. Like four flames of another fire sat the princes of Ayodhya around their guru. The other rishis and the ministers waited in a circle around the inner ring of Vasishta, the queens, and the brothers. Save for the cheery crackling of the branches Lakshmana had laid on, silence was upon them: the deep silence of the mountain, the sky above, in which fateful stars hung low, and the forest.
Rama said to Bharata, “I want to know why you have come here dressed like a rishi, when your place is on the throne of Ayodhya.”
Bharata stood up and folded his hands to his brother. He said, “In his last days, our father strayed from dharma. He was separated from you and he died brokenhearted. He ruined his taintless life for the sake of an evil woman, my mother Kaikeyi, who has lost everything now. She does not have what she wanted; and Dasaratha, who loved her like his breath, is gone. Her fate is too horrible even to think of. She is destined for the worst hell of all.
“But I am not here to speak of the past. Come back to Ayodhya, my brother. Be crowned king, as the people want. Let the clouds of despair vanish from our sky, and the sun and the moon shine on us again. You are the jewel of the Ikshvakus, Rama. Return to us.”
He spoke slowly; often, his voice choked with the strain of everything he had endured since he had been called back from Rajagriha. Rama rose and took Bharata in his arms. By now, most of the common people had arrived in that hermitage. Rama spoke loudly, so everyone heard him. He spoke with his arm around Bharata.
“How could anyone have thought for a moment that you wanted the throne for yourself? Noble child, you have more of the divine ancestry of Ikshvaku in you than the merely human. And you are a master of yourself. But as for my returning to Ayodhya, it is out of the question.
“There was never any error in what has happened, Bharata. It was the will of not just one but two of my parents that I spend fourteen years in the wilderness. And here I am. Our father died having made his wishes clear. I believe that one day you will realize what once seemed to be the obscure path was the way of dharma. Dasaratha died for that righteous way; though perhaps even to him the will of fate appeared cruel. Bharata, there are deeper forces at work in our lives than we know. There are greater tasks to be accomplished than we yet understand.
“So, my brother, as my father and my mother Kaikeyi wanted, I will rule the Dandaka vana for fourteen years. And you will rule Ayodhya.”
Bharata began to speak, but Rama held up his hand and said, “It is late now, and our mothers have had a long journey. It is not right that we keep them awake any longer.”
While the queens slept in the cottage, the rest of the people and the army of Ayodhya slept under the stars, most of them thinking how happily they could live here in the wilds as long as they were near Rama. His serenity and strength were like balm to their troubled hearts, and they slept soundly for the first time since he had left Ayodhya.
* * *
With sunrise, they gathered again around the ashes of the night’s fire.
Bharata began, “Rama, I will grant everything you said last night. I will admit that our father was in perfect possession of
his reason when he gave the kingdom to me. Ayodhya is mine, I grant you that. But I have a great desire to lay what is mine at your feet. Take it from me. Ayodhya is a broken dream. Only you can put its pieces together again and heal our kingdom. Accept my offering; it is for the good of everyone. The task is beyond me, and not what I was born for. Help me, Rama: come back home.”
Rama replied, “It is not that I don’t understand you, or feel sympathy for you. But fate has ordained that my path lead through the jungle, and yours to the throne of Ayodhya. I grant that common sense might cry out otherwise; but fate is beyond mere common sense. Once I came out into the wilderness, I sensed fate clearly in my heart: the forest calls me more urgently than Ayodhya. For me Ayodhya is far away. I will surely return to it one day; but not yet.
“Think of time, Bharata: how she carries us along, helpless, on her mysterious currents. Her ways and her purposes are always secret, and just hers to know. What is gathered today is scattered without warning tomorrow. Think of our father. He led such a great life; just look at his end.
“Nothing except change is permanent in our lives, and nothing but death is final in this world. Death walks at our side on every trail; he wrinkles our skin and turns our hair white. We delight in each sunrise and sunset, and forget that our lives are shortened by every one. The seasons come, each with its own allurements; but they take great slices of our lives with them.
“The relations of men are like ships passing each other on the ocean; whether with fathers, mothers, wives, or children. We meet and are briefly together, only to part inevitably: if not in life, then surely in death. We must not make too much of our sorrow; it is nature’s way. And who are we to question the wisdom of fate?
“Bharata, put away this petty grief. Accept your lot as our father left it to you, as his last dictate. Think of the Lord, who alone is beyond change, and walk the way of dharma without flinching. Go back to Ayodhya; take up the reins of kingdom in your able hands. I know you will be a great king. And our father knew this also, or he would not have left his body.