The Ramayana

by Ramesh Menon

  Rama smiled. “It is lucky you are as strong as Varuna himself.” He turned to Lakshmana and said more quietly, “All the omens of the earth, the sky, and the sea cry out that we shall fight a great war. Let us not waste any more time.”

  Down the Suvela hill came Rama and his vanara chieftains. Rama sat in dhyana, praying and studying the position of the sun, as he had learned to, long ago in Ayodhya, from Vasishta. When the sun reached an auspicious place in the sky, he raised his bow above his head and gave the signal for the march to begin.

  The vanaras had gathered rocks; they had pulled up young trees by their roots for the siege of Lanka. Excitement was upon them like a fever and their faces shone. Vibheeshana, Sugriva, Hanuman, Jambavan, Nala, Neela, and Lakshmana walked beside Rama. When they arrived at the gates of the city, they were arrayed again as Rama had ordered.

  Rama himself went to the northern gate, where Ravana waited for him within his walls. No fine trees and gardens did the prince’s eyes see in Lanka any more, but wave after wave of rakshasas, armed to their teeth, keen for battle. In turn the rakshasas looked out at the monkeys, and they were surprised that this was truly an ocean of vanaras. In contrast to the black-uniformed demon legions, the army of the forest was colorful with flowers in every hue, plucked from the trees and plants of Lanka, with which they had adorned their fur.

  14. Angada’s mission

  The sea of vanaras strained at its shores to begin battle. The monkeys’ roaring shook the ramparts of Lanka. They were eager for the dharma yuddha, the righteous war; but Rama restrained them. For, by the code of kings, and by dharma itself, a last effort should be made to strike peace: a messenger must be sent to Ravana, suing for it. After consulting Sugriva, Vibheeshana, Hanuman, and Lakshmana, Rama decided to send Angada.

  Rama called Vali’s son to him and said, “Angada, we must make a final attempt to find a, peaceful solution. Take a message to the Rakshasa from me. Say to him:

  “‘Your glory and your kingdom will soon be lost, and your life as well. You are the worst kind of thief there is, and you have abandoned the path of wisdom. For countless years, you have sinned against the rishis of the earth. You have tormented the Devas and darkened the elements of nature. But now the hour of retribution has come.

  “‘Remember, Rakshasa, no boon of Brahma protects you against me. You were so brave when you abducted Sita because she was alone; let us see how brave you are when you face me in battle.

  “‘I will give you a last chance to make peace. Return Sita to me, ask my pardon, and I will give it to you freely; and your life will be transformed. The Gods themselves send you this chance to mend yourself, and rule for another age. If you do not take it, Ravana, you will die. The choice is yours. There is the short, savage way of bloodshed and death, and the long, kinder way of repentance and dharma. Choose whether you want to remain a king, or if I must kill you and set Vibheeshana on your throne.

  “‘If you choose the way of violence, Rakshasa, gaze deeply at your precious Lanka before you come out to fight. It will be the last you see of her before you die.’

  “Take him my message, Angada, and tell me what he says.”

  With a cry, Angada rose into the air. He was clad in crimson and shone in the sky. The rakshasas gasped to see him as the vanara prince flashed over them and flew straight to Ravana’s palace. Ravana stood in his sabha, putting on his armor and issuing final commands to his generals before battle was joined. Silence fell on that sabha when Angada blazed in through the window. He flew down into their midst, and the golden bracelet around his wrist was like a band of fire. Vali’s son himself was a tongue of flame in Ravana’s court.

  Ravana had no time to speak before Angada declared himself: “I am Rama of Ayodhya’s messenger.”

  Without pausing, he delivered Rama’s message, exactly as Rama had given it to him. A growl grew in Ravana’s throat as he listened. Time and again, his nine macabre heads appeared and vanished around his central face. They glowered at the vanara out of many malevolent eyes. When Angada had finished, Ravana roared so the walls shook around them and the floor under their feet.

  “Seize him!” hissed the Lord of the rakshasas.

  The demons nearest Angada sprang forward and grasped his ankles. Angada offered no struggle, but allowed himself to be held. Ravana screeched, “Torture him! that he dares come here with such a message.”

  The rakshasas fetched ropes and made to bind Angada, when he also gave a tremendous roar. He rose into the air with the four hefty warriors who had seized him and leaped out of the window through which he had come. Angada landed on a terrace and, still roaring, shrugged off the demons who clung to him for their lives. He cast them down to their deaths, onto the flagstones far below. Like a brittle twig from a dead tree, he broke a turret from Ravana’s palace roof and smashed it to dust on the terrace. And roaring still, he flew back to Rama.

  * * *

  On both sides of Lanka’s gates, the opposing armies stood, sizing each other up. At first the rakshasas were staggered by the sheer numbers of the monkeys. But then their commanders cried, “They are only monkeys armed with sticks and stones. Shall Ravana’s army that conquered the Devas fear a nuisance of vanaras?”

  Ravana strode out onto his terrace once more, to survey his own forces and the enemy’s. He also cried to his troops below, asking how could the fighting rakshasas of Lanka fear a rabble of apes? He glowered out again at Rama and his wild legions.

  Rama gazed into Lanka and the horde of demons within, who clashed their gleaming swords and shields together in the midday sun. He paused for only a moment after Angada returned to him with Ravana’s answer to his offer of peace. Then, Sita’s face, her eyes brimming tears, rose like a vision in his mind.

  Rama raised the jeweled Kodanda above his head. Silence fell on both armies. Gracefully, the prince of Ayodhya brought his arm down. The roar of the vanaras was deafening as they surged forward, each monkey anxious to be the first one over the walls of Lanka.

  15. A serpent bond

  That first onrush of the vanaras was swift and decisive. In no time they demolished the eastern gate of Lanka. They perched in troops on the smooth outer walls of the city, which no other species could have scaled; for Sugriva’s nimble monkeys, they hardly posed an obstacle. The vanaras attacked the western and southern gates, and the hills resounded with their battle cries. Then Ravana gave the signal to repulse the onslaught of the jungle.

  The trumpets of Lanka blared; the drummers beat up a storm. Like another sea, the rakshasas surged forward to face the invading monkeys. The battle between those armies was like the primeval one the Devas fought against the Asuras on the shores of the Kshirasagara, when the amrita was churned up, and Mohini deceived the Asuras and gave all the nectar to the Devas.

  Not for a moment did this battle pause; not when blood flowed in scarlet streams through the streets of Lanka; not when thousands lay dead, demons and monkeys, and the screams of the dismembered and the dying moved the blank sky and the voiceless rocks to pity.

  Warrior locked with warrior in mortal combat. Strange and tortuous destiny had brought them face to face under the sun of just this day, for reasons as individual and inscrutable as time is old. Indrajit and Angada fought; their roars echoed through Lanka and bounced off the hillside. Hanuman and Jambumali fought, Neela and the ferocious Nikumbha. Lakshmana faced Virupaksha, and Rama, four rakshasas at once.

  Indrajit struck Angada a glancing blow with his mace. Crying out in rage, the scion of Kishkinda smashed the demon prince’s chariot down with a tree trunk and killed his horses. Indrajit fled. The battle between Lakshmana and Virupaksha was a brief one: Lakshmana slew the rakshasa with a humming shaft through his heart. It seemed that everywhere the vanaras had the day. Rakshasa chariots could hardly maneuver for the barrage of rocks the jungle soldiers rained on them. The demons used conventional techniques of war, which they had studied in their military schools and employed so successfully against enemies of the past. Now
they found these quite useless; the vanaras respected no tradition of battle. They fought with uncanny strength, untamed instinct, and agility, to which the rakshasas had no answer.

  The sun sank into the sea and the waves turned the color of the bloody streets of Lanka. Neither rakshasa nor vanara gave any thought to the night that fell. They fought on by darkness, and Varuna trembled in his shores. With the advent of night, the demons’ strength and ferocity swelled. But the vanaras were dauntless. Their golden eyes gleaming by the risen moon, they fought on.

  The tide from Rama’s bow and Lakshmana’s was lustrous in the moonlight; every shaft was a whisper of fate. The rakshasas shrank from the two kshatriyas: not an arrow of theirs failed to claim a life. It was as if Rama and Lakshmana were in contention to see which of them killed the most rakshasas. The demons fled from them; they would rather be anywhere than face the human princes. Rumor flew through the Lankan army about the brothers’ unworldly archery.

  Fighting with tree trunks and rocks, Angada not only wounded Indrajit’s body but injured his arrogance, even as, once, his father Vali had Indrajit’s father’s pride; that day, long ago, Ravana had been humiliated. Unable to contain Angada face to face, Indrajit began using maya. He vanished before the vanara’s eyes and fought invisibly.

  Word reached Indrajit about Rama’s and Lakshmana’s valor, and how the rakshasa army was routed wherever the princes fought. Desperate to retrieve both honor and lost ground, he flew unseen into the sky. He loosed shafts of agni down on the brothers of Ayodhya, taking them unawares. Mantled in maya, Indrajit invoked a fell weapon: a nagapasa, a snake coil of darkness. He shot a clutch of arrows at Rama and Lakshmana, quick as light, and charged with the serpentine paasa.

  Hissing through the night, the weapon bound the human princes in a flash. They fell like palasa trees flowered in crimson blooms. A cry of dismay went up from the vanaras; panic, like fire, swept through them. Their eyes shut, Rama and Lakshmana lay unmoving on the ground. In the sky, Indrajit roared his triumph.

  “I am Indrajit, who conquered the king of the Devas! And two mere men thought they could fight me? Not all the rishis can wake them from the sleep I have sent Rama and Lakshmana into.”

  Tidelike and inexorable, his arrows pierced a thousand vanaras, wounding all their chieftains. No monkey could discern Ravana’s son, or see from where his shafts blazed down. Only Vibheeshana saw his nephew veiled with maya in the sky. The uncanny serpents writhed, phosphorescent, around the felled kshatriyas. They lay motionless.

  The vanaras had to force themselves to stand and fight, after Rama, who was the reason they were here, had fallen. Shock ripped through the monkey legions. Neither Sugriva nor Hanuman knew what to do; terror seized them also, and their jungle feet burned to run. They could hardly bear their own grief; how could they ask their vanaras to fight a battle that was already lost?

  Indrajit was borne away to his father on a hundred rakshasas’ shoulders. He was sure the war was won. With Rama and Lakshmana dead, what war was left to fight? But Vibheeshana knew more about the nagapasa than the others. He came running to Sugriva, who knelt sobbing beside the motionless Rama.

  Vibheeshana said to the vanara king, “They are only unconscious. They will wake from this swoon, and evil shall not triumph so easily. Rally your soldiers, Sugriva. Rama lives!”

  Vibheeshana called for water. When it came, he chanted some slokas over the monkey king and sprinkled the water on his eyes as if to wake him from a trance. When Sugriva rose slowly to his feet, Vibheeshana said to him, “This is no time for weakness; your army panics to see you crying. Rama and Lakshmana must be guarded carefully. When they awake from their sleep of sorcery, they will lead us to victory. Be brave, Sugriva. Give in to fear now and all will be lost.”

  Sugriva still stood numb and disbelieving. Vibheeshana took him firmly by the arm and said loudly, so all the vanaras heard him, “Look carefully at the princes’ faces. They are not ashen with death, but still glow with life. No harm has come to Rama and Lakshmana; they will rise again to lead us to victory. Until then, Sugriva, take command.”

  Word flashed out that the brothers were not dead. Cheering loudly to reassure themselves, the monkeys were somewhat bold again. But would they really see their precious Rama leading them into battle again, with Lakshmana beside him? The vanaras carried the princes to a safer place, to protect them from further attack.

  The fighting had stopped; the rakshasas thought victory was theirs. They ignored the stricken monkeys and followed Indrajit’s triumphal march back to his father’s palace. No demon heard the vanaras whispering among themselves, like fire in dry grass, that Rama and Lakshmana were not dead.

  16. A ray of hope

  Indrajit’s march back to Ravana’s palace was jubilant. Conches blasted his victory; singing and dancing broke out and Ravana waited keenly for his son’s news. Indrajit jumped down from the shoulders of the ecstatic rakshasas who had carried him from battle. His severe, arrogant face wreathed in a smile, he bowed before his father.

  Ravana asked his son, “Tell me, heroic child, what have you done that makes the rakshasas shout for joy, and even you smile?”

  Indrajit replied, “Rama and Lakshmana are dead. I killed them from the sky with the nagapasa.”

  With a roar, Ravana jumped up from his throne. He ran to Indrajit and embraced him repeatedly. Even if he did not admit it, the Rakshasa had always been anxious about this first battle with an enemy against whom no boon protected him. Dark delight swept his heart at what his prince had done.

  * * *

  The vanaras stood around the fallen Rama and Lakshmana in an anxious crowd. Silence ruled them, and any leaf that stirred in the midnight breeze made them start for fear; so terrified were they of Indrajit. Hushed, the jungle army waited for Rama and Lakshmana to open their eyes.

  Ravana sent word to the rakshasis of the asokavana. When they came to him, and Trijata was among them, he said, “Tell Sita that Indrajit has killed Rama and his brother. She will not believe you. So take her aloft in the pushpaka vimana and show her the bodies from the sky. Let her know it is time she forgot her prince, and came to my bed. Now she will come.”

  His eyes shone with absolute obsession. Trijata and her rakshasis forced a protesting Sita into the vimana and flew up with her. In the light of the moon and the torches of the two armies, Sita saw the havoc the marauding vanaras had wreaked, and she smiled. But when they flew nearer the earth, she saw how excited the rakshasas of Lanka were and how stricken the monkeys. She saw Sugriva and Hanuman below; she saw they mourned. Lower still flew the vimana, and in a clearing at the heart of the vanara army, Sita saw the sight that froze her blood. For the first time since Ravana had abducted her, she saw Rama and Lakshmana. They lay very still on the ground. Wherever Indrajit’s arrows had pierced them, their bodies had blossomed in flowers of blood.

  Heartbroken in a moment, Sita wailed, “The rishis who said that I would be a sumangali were wrong. Look where my husband lies, cut down by Indrajit’s arrows. They said Rama would perform the aswamedha yagna and be king of all the world. But he has died without even being crowned in Ayodhya. The great Vasishta’s prophecies were false; and my feet, marked with the auspicious padma rekha—they also lied. Fate is all-powerful; stronger than Yama even. Oh Rama!”

  She sobbed so piteously that the hardest rakshasi was moved. But Trijata stroked her face and said, “Hush, Sita, hush. It is the pushpaka vimana you are flying in. This chariot would never carry you into the sky unless you were still a sumangali.

  “Indrajit’s weapons are full of maya; they have plunged Rama and Lakshmana into a trance. Look how the vanaras strain to see when they will wake up. They are not dead, only asleep. Look at Rama’s and Lakshmana’s faces. Dead faces do not glow like theirs, and I have seen many. Trijata may be a rakshasi, Sita, but she has never told a lie in her life and she does not lie to you now. The princes are not dead, only asleep. They were not born to die at Indrajit’s hands; great destiny has y
et to be fulfilled through them.”

  Sita stared down more closely. She saw that indeed, there was still sacred life left in Rama and Lakshmana. Their chests rose and fell with prana and there was color on their cheeks. She wiped her tears. She folded her hands to the princes, and hugged Trijata. With its own will, the pushpaka vimana flew back to the palace of the Lord of evil.

  17. The splendorous one

  Gathered anxiously around Rama and Lakshmana, the vanara chieftains were terrified lest the princes pass on from swoon into death. Then Rama’s lips twitched and he stirred. The monkeys held their breath. Rama moved his head, his eyes fluttered open. Turning on his side, he saw Lakshmana lying like a corpse, with blood flowers sprouted on his body.

  Rama sat up and cried, “My brother is dead! Lakshmana, how will I live when you are gone? I may find another Sita if I comb the earth, but I will never find another Lakshmana. Not another brother like you, not another kshatriya like you. How will I face Kausalya and Sumitra? Oh, what will I tell them?”

  He was still touched with the sorcery of Indrajit’s paasa, efflorescent on his skin. His speech was thick, and he spoke like one who was asleep and having a nightmare. He stroked Lakshmana’s face. “What will I tell Bharata, and Shatrughna, his twin? No, there is nothing left to live for. Rama will also end himself at Lakshmana’s side. I should have cared for him like a father and I have led him to his death. When I left Ayodhya, my brother followed me without a thought for his comfort or safety. Now I must follow him to Yama’s city.”

  Sobbing, still in a daze so he would not allow the others to speak, Rama grasped Sugriva’s hand and cried, “Loyal friend, go back to Kishkinda with what is left of your army. When Rama and Lakshmana are both dead, you may find it hard to fight Ravana. Go in peace, dear Sugriva; we shall meet again upon some crossing of eternity. Fly, my sweet vanaras, fly back to the jungle across the sea. Farewell, I will never forget you.”