‘I told them what I had done. I tried to explain that I was a rajkumar of Ayodhya, heir to the sunwood throne. Money was no object. I would see to it that they were taken care of for the rest of their lives. They cursed me.’
Kausalya reared back, like a child stung by a snake. Dasaratha nodded, understanding her reaction.
‘Cursed. They said that they had little time left to live. The only thing that kept them alive was the knowledge that they had such a fine young son. That he would go on after their passing away, would take a wife some day, would continue their line. Now, with him gone, they had nothing left to live for. What good was my money? They wanted their son back.’
Dasaratha hung his head in shame. ‘I left there in mortal fear. Their curse rang in my ears. I found my hunting party. Returned to the hut, intending to take the old couple back to the palace with me, ask my father Aja to decide what to do next.’
He raised his eyes to the ceiling, desolate. ‘When I returned, they were both dead. They had taken their own lives by chewing on a poisonroot plant.’
Kausalya placed her hand on his. He gripped it tightly, taking comfort in the contact.
Then he shrugged. ‘And that was the end of it.’
She shook her head. ‘Not the end. The curse. That was what gave you that bad dream, wasn’t it? What was the curse they laid upon you. What was it, Dasa?’
He looked at her levelly. A strange kind of calm had descended upon him, as if the telling of the tale had burned out his anxiety and anguish the way a fever burned out a disease.
‘They said that one day I too would lose a son the way they had lost theirs.’
Kausalya’s hand flew to her mouth.
‘That it would happen when I was old and ailing like they were. When I needed him most. That he would be brutally murdered the way I had murdered Satyakaam, not even knowing or seeing the face of his enemy.’
Kausalya rose from the bedside. ‘No! NO!’
Dasaratha spread his hands helplessly. ‘My dream was of Rama in the Bhayanak-van. He was alone, separated from Lakshman and the brahmarishi. And that was when the asuras attacked him from behind, from above, from all around. He was surrounded, and torn apart by the beasts. Torn to shreds.’
‘No, Dasa! That is not Rama’s fate! Rama will come back to us safe and sound. Alive!’
Dasaratha bowed his head. ‘I pray that you are right.’ He looked at her beseechingly. ‘But if you are right, then what of the curse of Satyakaam? What about my karma?’
***
Manthara offered Kaikeyi a thali full of paans. Kaikeyi looked at the little betelnut-leaf squares stuffed with an assortment of spices, and squealed: ‘Paan! I love paan!’
She took the largest, plumpest one and stuffed it into her mouth. Sticky sweet juices spilled out of the corner of her mouth, dripping on to the blouse of her sari. She wiped it away carelessly, spreading the stain further.
‘Umm, this is wonderful, Manthara. What’s in it?’
Manthara smiled. If she told Kaikeyi what was in these paans, the second queen would vomit out the entire mouthful. She replied cryptically: ‘Everything you like. And a little special something of my own.’
Yes, my dearest. A little Brahmin boy’s blood. Sanctified by our Lord of Lanka at my last yagna. Does that taste better now?
She took a paan too. The smallest one, made specially for her. She hated having to eat a morsel more than was absolutely essential to survive, as her bony arms and limbs testified so eloquently.
Kaikeyi watched her eat the miniature paan with wide, surprised eyes.
‘Manthara? You eating a paan? What’s the occasion? There must be an occasion if you’re eating paan!’
Manthara waited until she had chewed most of the paan. She resisted the urge to spit out the betelnut juice. If she spat, she would spit out the sanctified blood too. She forced herself to swallow the whole thing down, juice and all. Then she answered Kaikeyi’s question.
‘It’s been a very good day for us, my queen. A very good day indeed. And an even more fruitful night.’
She had just heard from her informants about the tamasha in the dungeons. It had been the perfect nightcap to an almost perfect day.
Kaikeyi mistook Manthara’s meaning. ‘Yes, it went just as you said. I did as you told me to do. Confronted Dasaratha and Kausalya and gave them both a piece of my mind. And I told them what you said to say, that Bharat would be the next king of Ayodhya, not Rama.’ She smiled, displaying a mouthful of red-stained teeth. ‘You should have seen Kausalya’s face. She thought I was going to spear her!’ She chuckled, spraying flecks of paan leaf. ‘I almost did too!’
‘A little more control next time,’ Manthara warned. ‘You must not use physical violence against anyone. You saw how much more effective it was to threaten the maharaja emotionally? It brought him to his knees more effectively than even a spear throw. And this way, nobody can blame you for what was after all just a family squabble. You were only venting your natural, inevitable reaction to your son being passed over for the coronation.’
‘Yes,’ Kaikeyi admitted. ‘But I hope Dasa won’t really die. I mean, I was angry with him. But if he dies …’
Manthara’s voice was as sharp as a whip cracking across the flank of a wayward horse. ‘If he dies, then his successor will become maharaja at once. And that successor will be Bharat.’
At the mention of Bharat, Kaikeyi’s face lit up. ‘Yes! I understand that. But how exactly will it happen? I mean, as of now Rama is still crown-prince-in-waiting. And if Dasa passes away without changing his decision …’
‘Dasa will live a while yet. Long enough to change his decision.’ Manthara smiled, her lips curling up slowly in contempt. ‘And long enough to see the bloody, broken corpse of Rama laid before his eyes.’
Kaikeyi’s eyes widened. ‘Rama? Dead? But how? You don’t mean that we will—’ Then understanding dawned on her face. ‘Of course! The Bhayanak-van. The asuras will kill him. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’ She frowned. ‘But what if he survives? What if he returns home safe and claims the crown? He’ll be a hero then. The people will support him over Bharat. So will the court.’
‘The people and the court will support their maharaja. And as I said before, the maharaja will rescind his decision and declare Bharat his successor. Less than two weeks from today.’
Kaikeyi reached for another large paan, glancing questioningly at Manthara first. Manthara gestured. Kaikeyi thankfully stuffed the delicacy into her mouth, chewing steadily as she pondered Manthara’s words.
‘But,’ she said through the mouthful of spices and betelnut, ‘how can you be so sure? I mean, how can you guarantee that Dasaratha will rescind and declare Bharat?’
Manthara leaned forward. ‘Because we will make him.’
Kaikeyi stopped chewing. ‘How?’
Manthara told her.
Kaikeyi choked on her paan. She went into a paroxysm of coughing, spewing out pieces of paan and juice and assorted flecks and bits of various things. Manthara watched her, wrinkling her nose in disgust yet keenly aware that it was weaknesses such as Kaikeyi’s gluttony that gave Manthara greater control over her.
Finally, Kaikeyi regained control of her voice again. ‘Manthara,’ she said, hoarsely. ‘You’re a genius. You think the time is right to do it now?’
‘Not yet,’ Manthara said. ‘But soon. Very soon.’
SEVENTEEN
Vishwamitra raised his arms over his head, gripped his staff in both fists, and leaped off the raft. He landed in a flurry of dried leaves and dust that rose like a nest of agitated serpents.
Rama and Lakshman followed his example, leaping together. At the instant their feet were about to leave the raft, it issued a groaning noise and shifted uneasily. Rama corrected himself in mid-leap, landing upright, but Lakshman lost his balance and landed on one foot, stumbling forward.
Rama caught him just in time to avoid him striking his chin on his bended knee. Lakshman recovered and
stood, darting a suspicious look back at the raft. Rama turned to find the seer staring in a southwesterly direction. Dust motes swirled around him, caught in a solitary thin shaft of sunlight that had somehow managed to penetrate the thickly webbed foliage.
‘Our presence has been sensed already. Soon she will get word of our arrival. At first, she will not deign to come herself, believing her minions to be more than capable of dealing with us. Only when they fail will she take serious note. Even then, we may have to go to her rather than wait for her to approach. Her power grows strongest at midnight, and is weakest at noonday, when the sun reaches its zenith. That is the time you must attack, and cleanse the earth of Tataka forever.’
Rama sensed Lakshman’s surprise before his brother spoke aloud. ‘Tataka? Parantu mahadev, just last night Rishi Adhranga told us the story of how Kartikeya killed her.’
Vishwamitra glanced at Lakshman. ‘The story he told was of the history of Kama’s Grove, Rajkumar Lakshman. Of how Kamadev and Parvati-devi interrupted Lord Shiva’s grief-stricken meditation to tempt him into creating a son who would be able to destroy the evil Yaksi. That son was Kartikeya and he was indeed created to kill Tataka, which duty he fulfilled to his great honour.’
Lakshman looked even more confused. ‘But if Tataka was killed …’
Vishwamitra held up a hand, motioning for silence. He listened carefully for a moment. Rama attuned his senses to the seer’s pitch, a level slightly below the normal range of human hearing, and heard what the sage heard: a distant thumping, like a giant hammer being struck on some unimaginably large anvil. But the sound was many dozens of yojanas distant, and was growing fainter rather than louder. Whatever was causing it was clearly travelling away from them. The seer returned his attention to Lakshman’s question.
‘Tataka is dead. Killed by Kartikeya. But as you know, matter can never truly be destroyed, only transformed. So when she died, she only left this mortal plane and was sent to the next plane, where she now belonged. Where would that be, Rajkumar Rama?’
‘To the netherworld,’ Rama replied. ‘Narak. The third and lowest of the three worlds. Otherwise called Hell.’
The seer indicated the forest around them. ‘Behold. Hell.’
Lakshman and Rama looked around, baffled.
‘But, mahadev, we are still on prithvi, are we not? How can hell be here?’ Lakshman pointed upstream in the direction from which they had just come. ‘This is very much our own world, the mortal plane of prithvi.’
The seer nodded. ‘This is the sorcerous power of Ravana, king of the asuras, young Lakshman. Listen.’
He leaned on his staff as he spoke. ‘After he was banished by the devas to patal, the lowest level of hell, Ravana the Terrible spent many thousands of years performing bhor tapasya so austere and awful to contemplate that even the devas were compelled to grant him many boons. Among those boons was his elevation to the stature of a master of Brahmanical power, a level of shakti comparable only to that which is wielded by the Seven Seers, the brahmarishis like myself who have been ordained by Brahma himself to oversee the smooth functioning and harmony of the three worlds.
‘But Ravana misused his shakti, performing terrible, barbaric sacrificial yagnas to achieve evil ends. One result of his efforts was the tearing of a hole between the realms of prithvi and patal. This was the very reason why he chose to build his capital, the Black Fortress, over the then submerged island of Lanka. Lanka was in fact not a piece of dry land at all, but a giant extinct volcano used by the devas to plug the entrance to patal deep beneath the Great Ocean. Ravana’s sorcery raised the island, resurrecting the volcano, with whose molten lava he built his impregnable fortress, creating a passageway through the heart of the volcano into patal. Through this, he raises a constant stream of asuras, recruiting them directly from hell itself, to create the largest asura host ever assembled.’
The seer pursed his lips tightly. ‘As long as that portal remains open, Ravana has access to unlimited hordes to fling at the Arya nations.’
Rama felt rather than saw the seer’s fist clench the threaded knob at the head of the staff. The motes of dust caught in the shaft of sunlight swirled faster, rising in a flurry like a dust dervish although there was not a mite of wind in the still, unnaturally silent forest.
Lakshman shook his head, bewildered. ‘That is shocking, mahadev. But, pardon my asking, what does it have to do with Tataka and this Bhayanak-van? Lanka is hundreds of yojanas distant from here.’ He corrected himself uncertainly. ‘Or at least, it should be, by the normal laws of geography.’
Vishwamitra was patient despite the deep anger that Rama sensed within the seer. ‘What you say is true, Rajkumar Lakshman. But Ravana’s ill-gotten Brahman shakti has grown powerful enough to enable him to punch holes in the fabric that separates realms. He has made another such hole here, releasing Tataka and her berserker sons into this beautiful land, and giving the evil Yaksi dominion over it.’
Lakshman looked around, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. ‘Beautiful land, mahadev? This accursed forest?’
Vishwamitra leaned on his staff. ‘This accursed forest you see was once the site of two great twin cities, named Malada and Karusha.’
‘Malada, Karusha,’ Lakshman repeated. ‘Dirt and Impurity?’
‘Indeed. So named because it was at this place that Lord Indra was washed clean of the terrible sin of Brahmin-hatya by the devas using the pure cleansing waters of the holy Ganga. The two places where his dirt and impurities fell to earth he named Malada and Karusha, blessing them with eternal fertility and prosperity for absorbing the detritus of his sin. In time they became two of the most prosperous cities in mortal history, great storehouses of wealth renowned for the fertility of their farmlands. But then Ravana released Tataka and her bloodthirsty sons from Patal and gave them this country to roam and dominate.
‘The Lord of Lanka did this with shrewd intent. Once, before even Lord Indra washed his sins here, this was the place where the great sage Agastya made his home and hermitage. It was here that originally Tataka was cursed by the sage and transformed by his shraap into the ugly wretched Yaksi she is now. By releasing Tataka into these same lands, Ravana could be certain of controlling her. For she can never leave this tract of forest to enter the world of Prithvi herself. This is her curse, to eternally haunt the Bhayanak-van, which, as you now know, was in fact once the blessed land Malada-Karusha.’
The seer pointed at the scummy stream behind them. ‘And that is all that remains of the sacred waters of the holy Ganga which fell to earth when Lord Indra washed his sins.’
Lakshman glanced in amazement at the filthy, choked stream. ‘The Ganga? That gutter of filth? It looks more like a Patalganga, the river of hell!’
‘Indeed, young prince. That is why the Patalganga is so named, because it is that stage of the holy Ganga that traverses the netherworld. Once that sickly stream you see there was also pure and clear as the Ganga itself. Tataka’s foul presence has made it unclean.’
The sage raised his staff and pointed south-west, in the direction he had been staring earlier.
‘That way lies my ashram, where my fellow rishis await my swift return. Once we have purified this haunted forest and restored it to its earlier glory, it will become a place of the Prithvi once more, reclaimed from patal. The Ganga will flow clear and pure again, and this land will regain its former flowering beauty which it enjoyed after Indra’s blessings were showered upon it.’
Lakshman asked his next question in a tone that suggested he suspected what the seer’s answer might be. ‘How will we achieve this great and holy task, Gurudev? How will we convert Bhayanak-van back into a part of Prithvi once more?’
The seer looked at him impassively, then glanced at Rama. ‘By killing Tataka, of course. That is why we are here.’
Before Lakshman could give voice to his reaction, the sage stiffened, gesturing for silence. He turned his head this way, then that, listening intently. With his new powers, Rama could easi
ly see what the seer saw, hear what he heard.
‘They’re coming,’ Rama said quietly to his brother, reaching for his bow and stringing an arrow.
Lakshman dropped to his knee in a shooting stance, drawing bow and arrow in the same action.
‘Tataka and her sons?’
‘If it was them attacking all at once,’ the seer-mage replied grimly, ‘this fight would be over in moments, one way or another.’
He glanced up at the faint slices of sky visible through the intertwined branches high above. ‘It will be noonday in a few hours. We would do well to wait and face Tataka when the sun is at its highest point.’
He tilted his head, listening once more.
PRINCE OF DHARMA Page 40