PRINCE OF DHARMA

by AKB eBOOKS Ashok K. Banker

  And jealous eyes would be watching constantly.

  All this passed through her mind in the space of the moment it took Rama to step through the marble archway. His face softened in a shy smile as he caught sight of her across the twenty-metre length of the square aangan.

  He raised his arm in greeting and was about to sprint to her when he saw the entourage of serving girls surrounding her and the pooja thali in her hands. He slowed his pace and strode in measured steps across the aangan, past the sacred tulsi that he had helped Kausalya plant when he was seven, past the greedily admiring doe eyes of the first queen’s entirely female palace staff, each one admiring every nuance of his lithe, muscled frame with the avariciousness of a johari testing the purity of gold— although even a jeweller would not dwell as shamelessly on the intimate anatomical details of a piece of jewellery as did the palace nubiles admiring Rama’s body. And after the announcement today, not just nubiles but every woman of the court would give her life for a single night in his embrace. Kausalya had no fear that Rama would give in to their temptations—she had brought him up too well for that, she knew—but she took some small pleasure from his popularity. It was a fine thing to be desired, as long as one never succumbed to desire.

  To his credit, without even throwing a flirtatious glance in anyone’s direction—he was his mother’s darling after all, she told herself with a brief flash of pride—he climbed the seven steps to the threshold where Kausalya stood. As he had passed the tulsi plant, a trio of little butterflies twirling playfully in the air attached themselves to him, roiling and fluttering around his head. As he reached the seventh step, they hovered before his face, attracting his attention for an instant—he laughed delightedly, turning cross-eyed as he tried to look at the bold admirers—then danced away in the wind. Prajapati, she thought. Butterflies were an embodiment of the One God that had created all living creatures large and small. The other six million gods—including the holy trinity that were in fact varying aspects of the One God—were all avatars of Prajapati, and the butterflies gracing Rama at such a moment were nothing less than a supreme blessing. She sent up a silent prayer and vowed to offer a special yagna to Prajapati before the season was over.

  ‘Maa, pranaam,’ he said, bowing low to touch her feet. Greetings, mother.

  ‘Ayushmaanbhav, Aryaputra,’ she responded formally. Live long, son of Arya.

  Touching his forehead with the tips of his mother-blessed fingers, he accepted her ashirwaad and straightened up. The maids beside Kausalya stepped up with the phool-mala and other tokens of the aarti, and she performed the simple ritual that every Arya mother and wife dutifully executed every day, praying for the long life, health, wealth and happiness of her husband and children. Traditionally, a wife performed the daily aarti for her husband before he left for his day’s duties, be they farming or kingship. This morning, she had already performed it for Dasaratha, but through these many years of marital estrangement, she had satisfied herself by blessing her son every day. And so it was this little ritual that made her feel as though her day was now truly begun.

  The aarti done, her oldest maid, Susama-daiimaa, the same midwife who had presided over Rama’s birth, rang the brass bell that hung over the threshold. In response, the assembled serving girls and women sounded their little silver hand-bells, signalling the end of the aarti. As the last tinkling of the pooja bells filled the aangan, rising into the clear morning air with the twining smoke and sweet odour of agar, an identical tinkling rose from other aangans within hearing distance—the Second Queen’s Palace, Third Queen’s Palace, and the Palace of Concubines. Across the capital city, identical sounds and fragrances were rising from a hundred thousand aangans as mothers blessed their husbands and first-borns and prayed for an auspicious start to the sowing season.

  ‘What a day this has been, maa,’ Rama said as they seated themselves in her reception chamber.

  They had a few minutes before the royal parade began. He briskly recounted the events of that morning, from his encounter with the deer and the poachers to the near-riot on Jagganath Marg.

  Kausalya listened patiently, though her heart was filled to bursting with her own news. She was surprised and a little disturbed to hear of the near-escapes from violence he had experienced.

  She had long since made her peace with the fact that violence would always be a part and parcel of Rama’s existence. She consoled herself with the knowledge that she had trained him well to seek peaceful solutions whenever possible. But it alarmed her that he had taken on both challenges unarmed. At times like this, she almost wished that Rama could be less truthful than he was, but immediately admonished herself for thinking such a thing.

  Serving girls bustled to and fro excitedly, bringing refreshments for them. Freed from the formality of the religious rite, the nubile young girls couldn’t take their eyes off Rama, and more than one brushed intimately against him as she bent to offer a platter of fruit or a cup of rose-water, offering him easy glimpses of her cleavage or ‘accidentally’ caressing his face or arms.

  After the second or third time, Rama cleared his throat and looked pointedly at Kausalya. She smiled wryly and clapped her hands, ordering the maids out of the room. They left reluctantly, and watched discreetly from the windows and doorways.

  ‘Maybe later,’ Rama said when she offered him food. He accepted only a clay cup of rose-flavoured water, sipping it slowly. Kausalya abjured eating too. There would be a feast later, and formality would require her to partake of some of that rich, heavy banquet. Rama had taken after her in his frugal eating habits, a stark contrast to his brother Bharat, whose appetites promised some day to rival even his father’s legendary voluptuousness.

  Kausalya remembered the time Rama had sat by his father’s side, sipping rose-water as Dasaratha guzzled goblets of wine, looking up adoringly at his father from time to time and trying so fetchingly to imitate Dasaratha’s peculiar habit of holding the goblet by the rim rather than the stem—until the cup slipped from his little fingers and shattered on the floor of the king’s bhojanshalya. The look of sadness that came on his little face as he looked down at the broken cup and the shards of painted clay was not for the spilled rose-water, he told Kausalya in a soft voice later that night, but for the broken cup, which he had crafted with his own hands at a potter’s wheel behind the palace. At the memory, Kausalya was struck by an impulse of motherly love so strong that it made her heart ache.

  Rama glanced up at her, sensing her eyes on him, and smiled his familiar distracted half-smile.

  Even now, he was as patient, as calm as he had been as a boy. The stillness of steel, Guru Vashishta had once commented. Kausalya leaned forward, resisting the urge to clasp him to her breast and hug him until he laughed and ran away to hide among her silks—rolling in their fragrant folds while she pretended to search half the palace before ‘luckily’ happening to find him—and finally spoke the words that had been waiting for release.

  ‘Your father came to me this morning.’

  He lowered the clay cup. It was an identical replica of the one he had made as a child, but far more perfectly finished and shaped—he had made this one too. He waited for her to go on.

  ‘He has decided that you are to be king on his passing. He wishes to crown you prince-heir on your sixteenth birthday this very month.’

  She waited for him to respond.

  But there was no response from Rama.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Rama remained silent, his eyes, fixed now on the granite-tiled floor, as dark and unfathomable as her own at such times. Like a well in the late afternoon, the water glinting far below in reflected sunlight, yet not directly visible no matter how hard you looked. Deep waters. She had been exactly the same in her youth, staying so silent that the elder women of her father’s palace had offered critical opinions of a possible lack of intelligence.

  ‘He wishes to make the announcement today,’ she added. ‘To prepare the kingdom for your coronation with great
pomp and ceremony. He is very proud of you.’

  Still Rama said nothing. Only listened, the clay cup now set on the floor between them, leaning forward, elbows resting on his crossed legs. From somewhere in the city, the sound of conch shells announced the formal start of the Holi festivities. A new flurry of excitement rippled through Kausalya’s maids. They would be waiting impatiently for she and Rama to finish their refreshments and join the rest of the royal family. Kausalya briefly flashed on the memories of the many Holi festivals over the years that she had spent without Rama by her side, without the attentions of Dasaratha, feeling like a third wheel on a chariot that had long outlived its usefulness. She firmly put aside those painful images. This was a new beginning, time to create new memories and record happy images. She focussed on conveying to Rama the importance of her message.

  ‘It is your birthright, as you know. You are next in line to the throne. It is your place to be king after he is … gone.’

  He raised his head. The change that had come over his features was small but frightful. She had some notion of how formidable he must have seemed to those trespassing poachers. So much rage in such a serene youthful face was terrifying to see.

  His voice was soft as molten steel, the words smouldering with fury.

  ‘And what of you? What of your place, the place you were denied? The humiliations you bore silently? The betrayal and the infidelity? The negligence? Will those be restored to you as well? Will his passing magically make everything all right?’

  His eyes were filled now with an inner light that was a reflection of the threat lurking in those deep waters. There was a gharial beneath that deceptively calm surface. An ancient reptilian creature whose ferocity and ruthlessness belied the apparent calm. She guessed that even the encounters with the poachers and the rioting mob would not have awoken this sleeping beast; those were problems his Kshatriya upbringing and training had more than prepared him to deal with, while this was something he had no defence against, no solution for, no means of dealing with. She had seen this same emotion surface in Rama once before, when he was very small, the first time he understood that despite her status as first queen, his mother was treated as an unwanted mistress while her usurper Kaikeyi reigned supreme with the king’s assent. That was the day the gharial had been born; now, it was an almost fully grown creature, matured by his realisation on his return from the ashram that nothing had changed: his mother still lived with the daily humiliation of being a cast-aside wife in her own palace.

  She paused, choosing her words carefully. She was not among those women who nursed their hurt and humiliation within their breasts and passed it to their children like sour milk, to curdle their stomachs and turn their hearts against their fathers.

  ‘He is ailing, Rama,’ she said gently. ‘He does not have long to live. He wishes … to make amends. He has already … reconciled with me, and I have accepted.’

  ‘Accepted?’

  Softly spoken though it was, the word sprang from his lips like an arrow shot at her heart. Her head throbbed with sudden anxiety. She feared she would not be able to convince him, to make him forgive his father’s past errors, to accept his legacy and wear the crown that had touched Dasaratha’s scalp.

  ‘What do you mean, accepted, Mother? How could you accept him back in the space of a single morning when his negligence has spanned a decade and a half?’

  ‘He is still my husband,’ she replied, keeping her voice level and as calm as she could manage. ‘And I am still his wife. We walked seven pheras around the sacred fire. Nothing can undo that.’

  He was silent, staring in rage at her for a moment. Then he saw something in her face that explained more than her words. He looked away, angry and ashamed, and she felt a flush burn her face. He had understood just how intimate the reconciliation had been.

  ‘And where do you stand on this … this royal change of heart?’ He said it without looking at her.

  ‘I stand as his wife and your mother.’ She tried to appeal to his softer side, to retreat to their unblemished bond as mother and son, free of the emotional baggage of her damaged relationship with his father. ‘I want this for you, Rama. I want to see you crowned king. It’s my life’s greatest wish. Nothing would make me happier. Try to understand.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ His voice was hoarse with anguish. ‘I understand everything. I understand that you’re willing to forget all and forgive him for the sake of my future, to put aside your long, silent suffering just so that I can sit on the throne of Ayodhya.’

  ‘No, Rama. That isn’t entirely true. I am done with the anger and the suffering. I’m ready to put it behind me. I want to go forward now, to make a new beginning. I want to celebrate Holi today with my son and my husband, and begin a new season of happiness. I want to enjoy this blessing that God has given me once again, and be content with it for as long as it lasts. And we both know that nothing lasts for ever. Heed my words, son. Put aside your anger. I believe your father is sincere and genuinely repentant. Forget his past mistakes. Accept his ashirwaad, and the crown of Ayodhya.’

  Rama made a gesture as scornful as flicking a bug off his shoulder. ‘I don’t want a crown as a consolation prize.’

  She was shocked at his sarcasm. It was not usually his way to use verbal barbs. He was too good a boy for that. But she had underestimated his banked anger all these years. Perhaps she had passed on some curdled milk after all, without her knowledge. Perhaps simply being her son had soured the good milk in his belly. Like her, he kept his gharial caged so deep that by the time it emerged it was too late to prepare for its ferocity.

  But she had banked emotions of her own. And this was one fight she had to fight, not against him, but for his sake.

  ‘Be careful now, son,’ she warned. ‘Don’t let your anger with your father cloud your judgement. You are a Suryavansha prince, the rightful heir to the throne. Accept your place in the dynasty. Ascend the throne you were born to occupy. This is beyond any personal feelings. This is a matter of history and destiny.’

  ‘History can be rewritten. Destiny can be changed.’ He almost snarled the next words: ‘If queens can be replaced at will, so can crown princes. Who knows what plans his other wife has in store for us in future?’

  ‘Rama Chandra!’ She spoke his full birth name for the first time in years. Not since he had left the palace for the ashram had she used his entire name aloud to his face. ‘You go too far. Remember who you are. As your mother, I forbid you from speaking another word against your father.’

  He looked at her. The fire in his eyes burned low and deep. But there was something else now. An awareness that she had changed. And bonded as he was to her, she prayed that he would understand and change with her. That he would cross over from the scorched lands of hate and bitterness and take that crucial first step on to the bridge of forgiveness. This was a test of everything she had taught him, things that were harder to learn than sword-art and archery. Lessons that must be learned so deeply that they became part of one’s personality. Please, Sri, she prayed to her patron goddess, let him see right and do right.

  She placed her palm on his cheek. His skin was hot. ‘Listen to me,’ she said in a tone that she might have used when he was a gurgling baby in her lap fifteen years ago. ‘Put the past away. Make a new beginning today, Rama. This is no accidental reconciliation. It was meant to be. Whatever is done, is done. It no longer matters. The only thing that matters is what lies ahead. Face it with an open and free mind. Accept it. Accept your dharma.’

  The glint in his eyes seemed to soften at that last word, grow less hostile. She pressed her advantage.

  ‘It is your dharma to fulfil your father’s wishes, to take his place on the throne of Ayodhya, to rule your people justly and wisely. These things you must do without doubt or question. These have nothing to do with his negligence of me, or our long estrangement. Those are insignificant in the larger context. Yes, I have forgiven and forgotten all lapses, just in the space of one
morning. Yet I do not demand or even request that you do the same. It is your decision to make. What I do demand is that you honour your parents and ancestors and heritage. Your dharma calls out to you. Answer it wisely.’

  A maid came to the door, looked in and started to speak. Kausalya dismissed her with a silent gesture. When she turned back to Rama, his face was still scarred with sorrow, but the rage was gone, she was relieved to see. The gharial had sunk beneath the surface again, descending into the depths.

  ‘My dharma.’ The words were soft, unaccented by anger. Yet Kausalya read an entire childhood of pain in them, the pain of a son who had seen his mother pining secretly in private while a younger woman took her place in public by her husband’s side. There was nothing she could do to chase away that pain. All she could do was to give him a positive goal to look forward to, a target on which to focus his energies. And pray for the best.