King of Lanka

by David Hair

  Rama and Lakshmana meet Hanuman (monkey-god)

  Rama helps monkey-king regain throne from brother, gains alliance with monkeys

  Hanuman locates Sita by flying to Lanka

  Vibhishana, demon-prince, defects to Rama’s side

  Indrajit nearly kills Rama and Lakshmana, only saved by Hanuman bringing healing herbs. Lakshmana kills Indrajit.

  Rama kills Ravana in final duel

  Sita rescued, proves fidelity by walking through fire. They return to Ayodhya (origin of Diwali).

  ‘Any thoughts, Guruji?’ he asked hopefully.

  Vishwamitra frowned, tapping the paper. ‘The effects of the Ramayana on what you do may not be obvious. Keep your eyes open for unexpected aid. We don’t know what was really meant by the ‘monkeys’. Remember that until the Mauryan Empire of 300 BC, south India was quite different to the north in terms of language, people and culture. Perhaps ‘monkeys’ was a derogatory reference to a tribe from southern India. Perhaps it really means monkeys! Keep an open mind.’

  Vikram sighed. He tapped the passage concerning Vibhishana. ‘What about this?’

  ‘Be very, very careful. Ravindra has read and lived the epic more times than ourselves, I don’t doubt. Be prepared for traitors and double agents. Don’t expect it to be straightforward.’

  ‘And beware of Indrajit too, I guess,’ Vikram grunted. ‘What I don’t understand is this whole business of the demons: where do they come from? Why do they even exist?’

  Vishwamitra shrugged. ‘It is likely that they exist because they are in the story. Just as this ‘alternate Pushkar’ exists. If places can be created by belief, then surely so can beings like these Rakshasa. So be very careful.’

  ‘And what about Sue Parker,’ he whispered to the sage. ‘What about her?’

  The old man thought for a long time. ‘If you are asking: where is she?’, I don’t know. I have tried to find her with seeking spells—so have you. Which means she may be a captive in the mythlands. Or dead. Or have left India and now beyond our reach.’

  Vikram nodded slowly, gnawing his lower lip.

  Vishwamitra tapped him on the knee. ‘But if you are asking: ‘Did what passed between her and you undermine what you are trying to achieve?’, then also I don’t know. That is between you and Rasita, when you find her.’ He placed a hand on Vikram’s arm. ‘I know you worry that Ravindra has always been victorious in your past lives,’ he said softly. ‘But I believe in you, Chand. I believe that this time, you will prevail. You need to believe that too.’

  The Bridge of Rama

  Madurai & Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu, April 2011

  ‘I hate partings,’ Deepika said. ‘So let’s just get this over with, yeah?’

  Amanjit stared into her face, drinking in every curve, every angle. ‘I can’t believe I’m letting this happen, sugar. These have been the best days of my life, and I’m just letting you walk away. I must be crazy.’

  All about them, the deafening bustle of Ajmer station resounded, but Amanjit was in his own little world of sadness. Passengers crowded and bumped about the couple, but he ignored them. His stomach was clenching and unclenching and his skin was dripping with perspiration. He clung to her and tried to imagine what it would be like to never let go. Vikram was fretting, but then Vik always did. He could wait, this time.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered, for the hundredth time that morning.

  ‘Me too,’ Deepika whispered back, pressed against him, arms wrapped about him. Her scent washed over him, and her lips were so sweet he never wanted to move again.

  ‘Last call, guys,’ Vikram nudged them. ‘Just get on the freakin’ train, Dee.’

  Amanjit could feel tears on his cheeks—he hoped they were Deepika’s because he was a warrior and didn’t cry.

  But his eyes were stinging as he waved her goodbye, standing on the platform while her train pulled away, taking her south to Mumbai, and who knew what fate. They waved until she was out of sight, and then they went back to the car park, gunned the engines of their newly purchased Hero Honda motorbikes, and began their own journey south, all the way to Sri Lanka.

  It took three days to reach Bangalore, winding through slow traffic and dodging potholes. Only occasionally could they open their throttles and really go for it. Long tiring rides, overpriced road-stop motels and dodgy meals in tiny dhabas. They left Rajasthan behind, and rolled down through Gujarat and Maharashtra into Karnataka, clad in black leathers, the reflect glass helmet-visors alien-like. Their weapons were in long soft-sided bags strapped to the back of the bikes. They were knights of the new age, riding to war.

  As they rode south, a sultry heat descended, and the foliage became greener, lusher, even though the monsoon was still months away. The road followed the Western Ghats, as they rolled southward. Place names flashed by, quickly forgotten. Amanjit felt like they were in a dream, always in motion, never arriving. But they reached Bangalore late on the third day and at last he began to feel like they were making progress. They overnighted in a decent hotel, and washed and ate better than for days, then took the winding roads south to Madurai. Amanjit felt his focus grow. Inaction chafed him, movement was his balm. The misery of being apart from Deepika still burned, but he could put it aside, and take notice of what was going on around him.

  The southern Indians had softer, rounder faces, darker skins. Cheery natures. People whose lands hadn’t been ravaged by the warfare that had beset the north for centuries on end. They had a gentler pace of life. Though Hinduism dominated, other religions existed alongside. Jain temples were few, and even fewer Sikh gurdwaras. They glimpsed Christian churches. There were many mosques: Islam had spread this far south too, through ancient trade routes. Hindu temples were still the most plentiful, mostly painted in bright colours, with giant domes that had hundreds of carved and painted images, as if a colourful flock of supernatural beings had decided to fly down and squat on the roof. It was a stark contrast to the more austere temples he was used to. But he liked it, and wished he could show Deepika. She loved colour, and here everything was so bright.

  ‘What’s the plan now, man?’ he nudged Vikram as they wolfed down a thali in a diner near their motel in Madurai, watching the dance of the autorickshaws outside. ‘Straight on? Do we need visas or something to get to Sri Lanka?’

  Vikram looked up from a newspaper, which was full of the latest terror wave—apparently some rebel group had ambushed and murdered a column of soldiers in the north, in Bihar. It was the worst of several recent attacks. The media were being kept from the scenes, and the military seemed particularly alarmed. Vikram laid the paper aside with a troubled look on his face. ‘No, we’re going to slip into the country uninvited. But I’d like to look at the Bridge of Rama first. So we’ll snoop around here a bit, then head down to the coast. We need to give ourselves the chance to meet Hanuman and the monkeys, in whatever form they might take.’

  ‘Okay. What’s there to do here, then?’

  ‘Here in Madurai? It’s just the oldest inhabited city in India, and the centre of the old Pandya Empire that held the south from around 500 BC until the thirteenth century. We’ll see a few sights.’

  Amanjit shrugged disinterestedly. History stuff didn’t really have anything to do with him. ‘I meant, what’s it got to do with the Ramayana?’

  Vikram tapped the table thoughtfully. ‘Nothing that I can think of.’ He pulled an anxious face. ‘That’s what’s worrying me. The Ramayana is much less precise about this leg of the story. With all the early northern parts, it is very tied to places, but down here, things tend to happen in the wilderness. There are no people and cities, just monkey tribes and caves and mountains, until you get to Lanka. Or maybe because I’m a northerner, it just seems that way.’

  Amanjit finished his food and swilled down some water to clean his mouth. ‘But Lanka, right? Sri Lanka! At least the war against the LTTE is over, there. We need to get my sister back as soon as we can.’ He leaned forward, dropping his voic
e. ‘Have you seen any Asura this trip?’

  Vikram leaned forward too, also lowering his voice. ‘A disguised rakshasa shows up in mirrors and photographs. Everywhere we go, I’ve been checking. I’ve not seen one yet.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Amanjit paused. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it either means we’re slipping past the enemy’s guard or we’re so far off beam that there are no defences down here.’

  ‘You’re not reassuring me, Vik.’

  They stayed in Madurai for almost a week, visiting the holy places: the Meenakshi-Amman temple to Shiva and the Thirumalai Nayakar, even the graceful pink Kazimar mosque. They scanned digital images looking for traces of Asura in the crowds, but found none. They looked for gateways into the mythworld, but found few, to their puzzlement. Those they found seemed tied to local legends, not the Ramayana. It was dispiriting, and only the occasional phone calls to Deepika kept Amanjit sane.

  They did make one new friend, a Sri Lankan Tamil student-doctor called Kasun. He had family in Sri Lanka, in fact he was enjoying a post-graduation vacation, winding his way through southern India on his way back to his home on the island. His father had a practice in a small town in the north, in what had been LTTE territories. He spoke about the sufferings of his people, transplanted by the British into the tea plantations as cheap labour, then discriminated against by the native Sinhalese, their language banned in schools, their rights almost nonexistent. ‘One day a LTTE group came to my village,’ Kasun told them. ‘I had a gun placed into my hand. Come and fight with us, they said to me. But I wanted to be a doctor, and refused. I thought they would beat me, but it turned out they needed medics even more than soldiers.’

  ‘How old were you?’ Amanjit said.

  ‘I was twelve years old. They got me out of the country, into India and places in Tamil Nadu where I could learn medicine. But the war ended before I graduated, thank all of heaven. I did not want to be a surgeon for terrorists. They should never have turned to terrorism. It gave the international community the excuse to condemn them and ignore the justice of their grievances. And it was just wrong.’

  ‘Is your family still alive?’

  ‘My father drowned in the floods last year. My brother has kept the surgery intact but it is not in use. I really should be hurrying home, but this will be my last time of peace for many years, I fear. When I get home, there will be so much to do.’

  Kasun left for home the next day, as if the conversation had reminded him of his duties. They’d told him they intended to go to Sri Lanka, and he urged them to visit, giving Vikram his contact details. He and Vikram seemed a lot alike to Amanjit, though Kasun was outwardly softer, far from the lean athletic creature Vikram was becoming. They had a similar thoughtfulness and intensity though.

  Another week in Madurai proved fruitless in unearthing clues. Finally, one Friday at the end of the month, Vikram saw a troupe of monkeys making its way south-east down a tangled little alley, and pointed them out to Amanjit. ‘Hey, shall we treat that as a sign and go south?’

  Amanjit could have kissed him. ‘Yeah, I’m so over this place, man. Let’s go down to Lanka and kick some Asura butt.’

  A day later they were standing on the seaside, staring at the line of little island and rocks disappearing out into the waters to the south-east. The Rama Setu—Rama’s Bridge. They were on Pamban Island, on the south-east side. A spit of sand extended out into the ocean. It ran for miles, then became a line of shoals, dotting the sea in a curved arc that ended at Mannar Island on the Sri Lankan coast. Boats plied the waters, mostly fishing boats, but ferries too. The horizon was lost in a haze, but they were sure they could make out the dark shape of Sri Lanka hunched on the skyline. It was sunset. The bikes were in storage at a hotel. They had packed and eaten. They were ready to travel.

  Amanjit had just phoned Deepika. She was okay, creeping about Mumbai trying to pick up the threads of the court case without revealing herself. She’d not seen any Asura either. It had been soothing just to hear her voice.

  They waited until the other sightseers had finished paddling in the water or sitting in shade, waiting for the sun to go down. They’d kept to the beaches: Rameshwaram was packed with temples to Rama, which Vikram seemed oppressed by, as if the painted statues were placing unreasonable demands upon him. Out here, the sun was lovely and the sea air cleansing. The surf swished dreamily. It did not feel like they were going to war, more like a vacation.

  ‘The land bridge was passable on foot until the fifteenth century,’ Vikram, in his ‘walking encyclopaedia’ persona, told Amanjit. ‘Then a big storm ripped a deep channel through it, further out to sea.’

  ‘Whatever. Let’s just go, Vik.’ Amanjit wanted to get moving. No sooner had the sun gone down than he was standing over Vikram with bags in hand. ‘Let’s do it,’ He’d patrolled the beach, mirror in hand trying to spot an enemy. Still nothing: he was almost keen to see an Asura, just for the reassurance that they were still out there. And maybe they could capture one and question it.

  Vikram stood, pulled out a knife, and passed his hand over it, turning the blade into a pale rainbow of light. Then he lifted it high, and began to carve the air apart. He’d sensed a pocket of mythland here, and Vishwamitra had taught him how to reach it.

  Amanjit watched with bated breath as sparks of all colours flew from the knife. The air peeled back like wallpaper and dissolved. A warm fruit-laden wind swished through the hole, and when he peered inside, he could see the same beach, exactly the same, but it was brighter lit by a silvery moon. Most thrillingly, there was a structure there, a low-slung line of darkness that ran into the sea. He felt a quiver of excitement. Drawing his sword, he stepped through, into the mythlands. The air that enfolded him tasted sweet and clean, and he inhaled deeply. He looked about him, but there was no one there. ‘All clear, man.’ Vikram followed him through, then dismissed the gate with a crisp gesture. They both stared at the Rama Setu. ‘This is more like it,’ Amanjit breathed.

  It certainly seemed that they were on the right track now. Even in this light, they could see that the line of darkness was in fact a mighty bridge, upheld by massive fifty-foot tall stone-carved monkeys. The bridge led into the sea, on and out of sight.

  Vikram whistled. ‘It’s thirty miles long, well at least it’s that far from here to Sri Lanka in our world. And it may be guarded.’ He frowned. ‘Maybe we should use the musafir-astra?’

  Amanjit scoffed. ‘Are you kidding? I didn’t come all this way to NOT walk the Bridge of Rama!’

  They took their time, and soaked in the strangeness of it all. The bridge seemed to be one piece of sandstone, reddish-brown and beautifully carved. Each of the giant monkey carvings that bore the walkway seemed unique, whether it was a different facial expression, or pose, or weapon held in their non-bridge-bearing arm.

  ‘Were they carved or petrified?’ Amanjit wondered. Either seemed possible, they were so life-like. Had some spell turned them to stone, rather than some immense army of masons carving them?

  The bridge ran unerringly straight, something the real Rama Setu did not, for thirty miles to the distant kingdom of Lanka. The weather was perfect, warm but not oppressive, and they took their time, covering just ten miles a day, wary of tiredness. The two nights they spent on the bridge were cool but comfortable.

  The bridge also swarmed with real flesh-and-blood monkeys that chattered and skittered about, and followed them at a distance, a massive swarm. At first they made the boys laugh, and then they made them nervous. Then the creatures receded into the background. There was no sign of what they ate, and they did not even seem to foul the bridge. There was such a pristine quality to the bridge that even wild creatures did not begrime it. Below them, the waters rushed past first north then south, as if tidally driven. The water too was preternaturally clear, and at times they saw large dark shapes glide past beneath the waves, fish of unnatural size oblivious to them, caught up in their own world, where the surface was the roof of all
existence.

  ‘Sometimes I think our world is like a drop of water,’ Vikram mused. ‘We stare at the walls not even realizing there is something outside. It is only when you stumble into places like this, you know that there is something outside the drop of water.’

  Amanjit lifted an eyebrow and snorted. ‘Very deep, man. Did you bring a stash of ganja with you? Have you been smoking?’

  Vikram half-smiled. ‘You’re a soulless sword-swinger, bhai.’

  ‘That’s me! And happy to be so!’

  Gradually, Lanka appeared out of the distance, lushly verdant, capped with mountains and with turreted towers gleaming in the sunlight. The monkeys stopped, and one came forward and bowed at their feet, then scampered away. They watched it go with a faint feeling of apprehension. Weren’t the monkeys supposed to help them storm the city? Where was Hanuman? Where was Sugriva and his quest to wrest back his throne?

  Wasn’t this all just too easy?

  On the last day they could see a gateway at the far end of the bridge, growing larger as they approached. Even at this distance it was an awesome size, thrice the height of the India Gate arch in Delhi. It was carved to resemble two massive Asura statues with horns and teeth, bearing a cross-beam on their shoulders. The statues were studded with gemstones and painted in bright lacquers. In their free hands each statuary-demon carried a trumpet, and as the two boys approached, the trumpets raised in unison, and a deafening brazen blast heralded their arrival.

  At once the ramparts of the walls surrounding the gates were filled with rank upon rank of archers and spearmen, capering Asuras with beast-heads and muscular bodies encased in glittering armour. They looked like picture book figures come to life—and nothing like the Asuras they had seen up north. These looked like animated watercolour images of how a child might picture a demon.