PRINCE OF DHARMA

by AKB eBOOKS Ashok K. Banker

  ‘Gurudev, pranaam,’ he said, joining his hands respectfully before the seer.

  ‘Pranaam, raje,’ the guru replied. ‘I see that you have been binding old wounds and weaving fresh bonds this morning. It is a good beginning to an auspicious day.’

  Dasaratha bowed his head silently, not sure what to say to that observation and knowing from long experience that it was best to say nothing rather than blurt out a foolish remark. The Kshatriya code demanded that even the proudest and fiercest warrior caste must bow before the spiritual superiority of a Brahmin. Yet Dasaratha bowed his head not simply to uphold the code but out of simple respect. Guru Vashishta had mentored fifty kings of the Suryavansha dynasty before Dasaratha, every single one of his ancestors dating back to clan-founder Ikshvaku and even beyond to Manu Lawmaker, the first Arya. For one thousand years, the greatest Suryavansha Kshatriyas had bowed before Vashishta. It was a formidable heritage.

  The sage turned and began to walk, inviting Dasaratha to accompany him. Dasaratha found he had to strive to keep pace with the agile and slender guru who walked as decisively as he spoke. One thousand years older than me and I’m the one who walks like an ailing old man, he thought ruefully. Yet there was a time, not ten years ago, when he could at least keep up with the seer. For the tenth time that day, he cursed the nameless canker that had brought him to this decrepit state.

  If the guru noticed his struggle to keep pace, he gave no sign of it. His manner was as businesslike as always when discussing formal matters with the maharaja.

  ‘Ayodhya-naresh, I am pleased to inform you that an even more auspicious event has occurred this fine first day of spring. A very great and divine personage has chosen to grace us with his presence. I do not yet know what his arrival here means, but certainly it is an auspicious and momentous visitation. Maharaja Dasaratha, count yourself among the few fortunate kings of Ayodhya. For you have none other than the renowned seermage Vishwamitra standing at your gates. Come with me, and let us receive him with all ceremony.’

  It took every ounce of Dasaratha’s will not to stop dead in his tracks.

  SIX

  Lakshman and Shatrugan woke at the exact same instant. They finished their ablutions quickly, dressed and came out of their bedchambers at the same time. Falling into step beside his younger brother—by twenty minutes—Shatrugan slapped him on the back affectionately.

  ‘No sword today, Luck?’

  Lakshman gestured at Shatrugan’s hip. ‘You neither, Shot. Because it’s forbidden by maharaja’s law to carry arms on a feast day. Or did you forget that during your long, rigorous training in the forest at Guru Vashishta’s gurukul?’

  Shatrugan mirrored Lakshman’s toothy grin. ‘I don’t know about rigorous, but it surely was long. I was beginning to think we would spend the best years of our lives in that hermitage in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Well, now you’re back in the lap of luxury.’ Lakshman gestured at the opulence of their surroundings, the princely annexe, a section of the king’s palace. ‘You must feel like you died and went to swarga-loka.’ He corrected himself: ‘Or came back to swarga-loka.’

  Shatrugan shrugged. ‘Yes, it is heavenly, isn’t it? But somehow, brother, it doesn’t seem real any more. I mean, I remember it from when we were little. Then it was all we knew, our entire cosmos. But after eight years in the forest, living off the land, sleeping on clay floors, dirt under our fingernails all the time, straw in our hair, all this feels … you know … ’

  ‘Maya. An illusion? Like it could vanish at any time?’ Lakshman snapped his fingers, the sound echoing in the silent corridors they were walking through. Except for the occasional curtsying serving girl or maid, the vast halls were empty. Each prince had a suite of seven chambers to himself, with several more additional ones. ‘Yes, brother,’ he agreed as they passed the library and then the akhada, where they worked out together with their brothers every morning. ‘That’s the whole point of those eight years of training. To make us realise the illusive seductiveness of luxury and wealth.’

  Shatrugan nodded without slowing. ‘That’s one way of putting it. Although I thought we also learned the Vedic sciences and humanities. Everything from Vedic mathematics, physics, geography, ayurveda and the study of human physiognomy, cosmology, astronomy and astrology, military strategy, self-defence and hand-to-hand combat, mastery of weapons, engineering and architecture—’

  Lakshman clapped his brother on his muscled shoulder. ‘Enough already! I was there too, you know, right beside you, learning all that you learned.’

  ‘I was just trying to point out that after all those years of study and training, it seems so strange to be here again.’ Shatrugan stopped suddenly, turning to Lakshman, a strange expression darkening his features. ‘Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be a free-archer?’

  Lakshman almost choked on his surprised laughter. ‘What? You mean a mercenary? Like a wandering bow-for-hire?’

  ‘Or a sword-for-hire,’ Shatrugan mused thoughtfully. He looked up at the ornately carved ceiling painted with a fresco depicting the deva of storms, Indra. ‘Sometimes I feel like maybe I was born in the wrong age. Like if I was born a thousand years earlier, I would have been out there battling asuras, slaying rakshasas by the hundreds.’ He looked down at his empty hands, turning them over. They were veined and taut from daily weight and weapons training. Nobody, perhaps not even Rama, trained and exercised as hard as Shatrugan did. It was starting to show. ‘I feel as if I was made for something more than just governing a kingdom and touching silken robes.’

  Lakshman stared at him. He wasn’t sure what to make of this extraordinary admission. At a loss for words, he turned the revelation into a joke. ‘What did you eat for dinner last night, brother? Because I fear you’ve been stricken with food poisoning!’

  Shatrugan’s hand flashed out faster than Lakshman could dodge, grabbing his younger twin’s shoulder in an iron-vice grip. The strange expression was still on his angular features. Despite their identical appearance, there was a sense of hardness about Shatrugan that was curiously absent in Lakshman. It was as if an artist had drawn them each in turn, aiming for identical similarity, but had been in a different mood each time. The same features that came across as hard and grim in Shatrugan appeared gentle and light-hearted in Lakshman. It was a subtle contrast visible only to those who looked closely enough, yet once you were keen enough to see it, it was unmistakable. Only when they smiled did the differences vanish.

  They smiled now, at the exact same instant. And became two perfect profiles of the same face.

  ‘Speaking of dinner, brother,’ Shatrugan said in a deceptively casual tone, ‘are you planning to gorge yourself full to bursting on Susama-daiimaa’s sumptuous morning naashta savouries, or did you have other more pressing plans?’

  Lakshman shrugged, the weight of Shatrugan’s hand still on his left shoulder. ‘Actually, I thought I’d skip naashta and make for the mango groves. Rama and I fixed up to meet there at sunrise and it’s almost time.’

  Shatrugan’s smile deepened. ‘All right then,’ he said slowly, building up momentum with his deliberate pauses, playing a game they had played every day since they had first learned to walk and talk—the very same moment, it had been, in fact. He yelled suddenly, as Lakshman had known he would: ‘Last one to the stables is a camel’s rear end!’

  Even before he finished, he let go of Lakshman and ran down the corridor, not towards the bhojanshalya where they had been heading, but towards the rear stairway which led to the stables and eastern gates. His ploy to surprise and delay his brother was no more successful than usual: Lakshman’s lighter, less thickly muscled form gave him the edge, carrying him easily ahead of the bulkier akhada-built physique of his brother. Even before they reached the head of the stairwell, the outcome of the race was a foregone conclusion.

  The eastern sky was suffused with luminous soft light, turning the enormous white-marble fountain in the centre of the circular driveway into
quietly gleaming bronze. The first strands of light of the rising sun—barely peeking its head over the crags of the distant Gharwal Hills—caught the polished edges of the effigy of Surya, sun god and the progenitor of the eponymous Suryavansha dynasty, standing at his chariot, one hand gripping the twin reins of his magnificent Kambhoja stallions, the other holding his Suryachakra, the magical golden disc.

  The twins slowed to a walk, Lakshman two whole lengths ahead, laughing and slapping one another on the back as they circled the courtyard and rounded the enormous lotus pool containing the fountain. The sculpture itself rose a good seventy feet in the air, towering above the entire courtyard and driveway, casting a shadow that seemed to point proudly at the palace. The brothers turned right towards the chariot-stables where their grooms were waiting, ready and alert. The princes were all early risers and their charioteers knew well enough to keep their raths ready and waiting. The raths, elegantly designed two-horse Arya chariots built for speed and manoeuvrability, gleamed in the early-morning sunshine, their gold-plated iron armour polished to a mirrored sheen.

  Shatrugan dismissed his driver with a curt gesture, leaped up on to the platform of his rath, and was off instantly. He called out to Lakshman as he manoeuvred the rath smartly in a ninety-degree turn.

  ‘See you at the games, brother. When I win the shield in the archery contest!’

  ‘You mean when Rama wins the shield!’ Lakshman shouted back.

  Shatrugan waved as he rode off, his rath taking the curve of the fountain easily. Lakshman watched him pass through the rear gates and turn right on to Aja Marg, heading for the royal games field. Their older brother Bharat—older by two weeks— would be there already, waiting for him. Twins they might be, but from infancy, Shatrugan had veered towards Bharat’s company, and Lakshman had sought out Rama’s companionship. The bonds of these pairings had only been strengthened during their eight years away from home.

  Lakshman turned back to the stables.

  He spent a moment speaking affectionately to his horses. He loved animals and they seemed to know this at once. It was one of the many qualities he shared with his elder brother Rama— elder by four weeks, and eldest of all four of them. Shatrugan, on the other hand, neither liked nor disliked animals.

  Lakshman returned the respectful namaskar of his charioteer. ‘Ayushmaanbhav, Samar. How long ago did Rama leave?’

  The charioteer grinned. ‘Long life to you as well, my prince. Rajkumar Rama left very early, just before dawn. We were only just starting to groom the horses. I knew you would ask after him, so I spoke to his charioteer and Samin says he rode out in the direction of the river.’

  Lakshman frowned. If Rama’s charioteer was still here, then that meant … ‘He rode his rath himself then?’

  ‘Nay, Rajkumar Lakshman, he declined to take his rath.’

  ‘Horseback then?’

  ‘Yes, my prince. He said that the rath horses should be fresh and rested before the Holi parade, so he took an old battlehorse from the king’s stables.’

  ‘That must be Airavata,’ Lakshman said at once.

  His driver grinned again. In the dim early light his teeth flashed brilliantly white against his dark face. ‘Right as ever, my rajkumar. You and Rajkumar Shatrugan are womb-brothers, yet your kinship with Rajkumar Rama is no less a bond. You are twins in all but appearance.’

  Lakshman smiled back. ‘So I have been told.’ He thanked his charioteer for the information. Samar and Samin, like the charioteers of Bharat and Shatrugan’s raths, were not just excellent rath-drivers and warriors, they were also fellowshishyas from Guru Vashishta’s gurukul. In the reign of Dasaratha, it was mandatory for all Kshatriyas to acquire the gifts of Saraswati, devi of knowledge. Samar was as much a peer and a friend as he was Lakshman’s rath-driver.

  Lakshman took Marut, another old battlehorse that had seen better days and greater challenges. Sometimes while astride the ancient destrier he felt as if he was riding back through time itself, into the ancient days Shatrugan had spoken of, a time when war was a simple fact of daily existence and a Kshatriya was a warrior not just by birth and name, but in his daily actions. To defend the Arya nations and die defending them, that was all a Kshatriya was expected to do. It was his dharma, just as the Brahmins or priest-class must maintain the sanctity of Arya dharmic rituals and traditions, the vaisyas maintain the trade and commerce that were essential for Arya economy, and the sudras perform the less desirable yet necessary duties of cleaning, foraging, hunting, and otherwise ensuring the health and maintenance of the community. In those days, caste divisions had been a vital part of survival. Today, even a sudra could rise to Kshatriya status through diligent effort and application. In the age of Dasaratha, being a Kshatriya was no less honourable, yet it was much less exciting than the days that Shatrugan found so attractive.

  But Lakshman wasn’t Shatrugan. He didn’t fear war, yet he didn’t desire it either. He could do without battling asuras and slaughtering rakshasas, all his life if need be. To do one’s duty as a Kshatriya was inevitable and desirable, yes, but this was fine too, to live in a time of peace and calm.

  ‘We’re bred for war, you and I, old Kshatriya,’ he said, leaning to nuzzle and pat Marut’s neck as he rode down the empty marg. ‘But what else do we fight wars for, if not to win peace? Let’s hope we get to enjoy this well-deserved peace for another thousand years, right, brave one?’

  The battlehorse flicked his head and whinnied, his powerful strides belying his age as he found his wind.

  As he turned his head briefly, Lakshman caught a glimpse of Marut’s forehead, still marked with the grisly scar of an axe-wound that would have felled lesser horses. He understood the gesture: even the old battlehorse would take peace over war any day.

  SEVEN

  Sumantra had arranged the arghya items Guru Vashishta had ordered and was waiting at the palace steps. The sky had turned crimson and saffron in the east and the deep midnight blue Dasaratha had seen from the akasa-chamber had turned to a lighter blue, the exact shade of the white-and-blue china vase he had been gifted by the Greek envoy just last week. It was an auspicious blue, the blue of Brahman, and Dasaratha felt a stirring in his heart as he walked with his mahaguru and pradhan-mantri towards the gates of his palace.

  Vashishta continued speaking softly as they walked, his voice audible only to Dasaratha’s ears. They often adopted this method to get Dasaratha through the rigorous rituals of official ceremonies. Dasaratha had long since accepted the impossibility of remembering every minute detail of the intricate chain of actions and words that were strictly required by Vedic tradition.

  Yet he wondered how Vashishta could recall these hundreds of thousands of details with such flawless ease. This was only one of the many reasons that Kshatriyas gratefully and gladly accepted the spiritual guidance of the Brahmins. This way a Kshatriya was free to concentrate on his real duties rather than clutter his precious time and mindspace with countless details. Yet sometimes even Dasaratha wondered if that wasn’t precisely the reason why Brahmins made these rituals so intricate and complex!

  Still, after a lifetime of listening unobtrusively, he was comfortable with receiving the guru’s constant flow of instructions and advice. It was not a matter of who was in command, as some foolish clan-chieftains made it out to be, but simply who possessed the best knowledge on a specific matter. Besides, even the palace guards saluting them as they walked in the pleasant dawn breeze were not aware of the guru speaking in Dasaratha’s ear. It was as if, Dasaratha often mused, the guru could telepathically transmit his words directly into Dasaratha’s brain.

  ‘And lastly, even by error, do not mention my old association with him, back when he was a king, before he became a spiritual man. Since his reformation and his subsequent elevation to brahmarishi stature, Vishwamitra does not like to be reminded of his former life.’

  Dasaratha jotted a mental note to look up Vishwamitra’s ‘former life’ in the royal library later. All he knew of the leg
endary seer-mage was that he had been ordained some fourteen hundred years ago by the great god Shiva himself. Before that, he had been a king, Dasaratha knew. Not a maharaja of united clans but a maharaja of some princely clan housed far to the northwest. Guru Vashishta’s cryptic reference—‘his reformation’— suggested he had led an interesting life back then. Certainly more interesting than spending two hundred and forty-two years meditating in the deep forest.

  The gates of the palace were wide open as always. These were peaceful times and Ayodhya took pride in the fact that its houses were never barred or locked, not even the king’s palace. In his entire reign, Dasaratha had never needed to lock them against anything or anybody. Even the palace guard, highly trained and alert though they were, were completely decorative. They were compelled to hold weekly athletic games to keep in shape and had developed a complicated choreographed ritual for the change of watch that had become a tourist attraction. The quad of four guards at the guardhouse by the gates had been joined by an entire platoon as was customary when the king emerged from the palace. Moving in perfect unison now, they performed an impressive variation of the changing-ofguards ritual, flipping their short spears and passing them from one hand to the other before setting them back on to their shoulders and saluting their king smartly as he approached.