by David Hair
‘Manda!’ the Ravan pleaded. ‘I loved you!’
‘What you called love was not love at all,’ she replied, her voice musical but cold. ‘Love does not imprison, it frees. Love does not take, it gives. You have no idea what love is, and you never will.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘All those years ago I endured your cruelty, thinking I had to sacrifice myself to preserve the kingdom. No more!’
Vikram found he could move. He raised his bow, sensing that only one astra would work. He had no energy, but there was an energy source beside him that would be all he needed. He drew on Ravan Aeshwaran’s own Pashupata-astra, seized its flow, reshaping the energy as swiftly as he could. From it he made a Brahmastra, the Creator’s arrow. Just like in the Ramayana. The Creator’s astra, the antithesis of Destruction.
Ravindra hung in the sky, helpless, his eyes pleading. His wife’s expression held no pity at all. ‘Fire, Dasraiyat,’ Manda said in a voice of aching sorrow. ‘End this now.’
As the arrow in her hand faded and crumbled to ash, and its energy flowed into his own astra, her face turned slowly towards him, and she spoke in his ear. ‘Goodbye, Dasraiyat. Forever. For me, there are no more lives. There is one more thing I must do. And then … moksha. I shall be released.’
The Brahmastra flew. The antithesis of the Destructive energies that burned within Ravindra. He couldn’t watch as his age-old enemy finally died. More than died: ceased to be. Instead he watched Manda, whose face held such a look of transcendent joy and sadness he could not bear it.
Then she was gone, and his arrow struck Ravindra in the chest. A burst of light sent the world spinning away.
Through the jagged hole in the roof of the bathing pool chamber, a brilliant light lit up the sky in one searing flash. A pulse of energy shocked through Rasita and Deepika. Ras vaguely sensed Keke roll from her, terrified, but she embraced the flow of illumination as it coursed through her. An extraordinary feeling of well-being washed her like being immersed in warm scented water, caressed by loving hands, kissed by a lover, held by a mother. All pain fell away. She looked down and she seemed to see her own body, lying on the stone with a look of ecstatic wonder on the face. Deepika lay beside her, exactly the same look on her face. Then she was the one on her back, staring up, at the brilliantly-lit figure above her.
A goddess knelt over them, clothed in light and joy, and she held fire and water and earth and air in her hands. She had three faces, wrapped around the front of her head. Her left face was stern and dark, her right face shining and celestial, and in the middle, a balance between the two that was the most human.
‘Mandodari?’ Rasita and Deepika croaked together.
‘Just Manda,’ the shining being replied. ‘I am whole now. Ravan is dead. I can go on now.’
Rasita felt a surge of panic and loss. ‘Go on?’
‘But what about us?’ Deepika asked fearfully.
Manda reached down a hand to them both. She smiled. ‘You will remain behind. In joining your essence, you have remade me, but only for a short time. Had you surrendered yourselves to Aeshwaran, I would have been chained spiritually, a source of overwhelming power for him. There would have been no limit to what he could do, in this world or in yours. But you held out, and so I was free to help Vikram destroy Aeshwaran—forever. Now I can use my power to repay you both.
‘After I was broken apart, my seven little soul-fragments remained separate. Too weak and flimsy, they died young, time and again. But souls can regrow, as they are composed of life. Every one of us, the seven Aspects that I broke into, have been trying to regrow. The four elemental ones were the weakest, so grew the least. But the Destructive Aspect, Halika, could function as a normal human, albeit one twisted towards evil.
‘You, Darya, were the Protector Aspect, and you were more resilient than Halika. Always you were reaching for the light, though in times of peril, the darkness would overwhelm you. You are more whole than Halika ever was.
‘And you, poor Padma, were broken again. Three fragments of an already fractured soul, ensuring that your lives were always brief. But now, through all of your courage, you two have restored me—I am the master of all aspects once more. I have the power to make you whole in yourselves. Do not think of yourselves as fragments of a broken whole any more. I will make you both complete. Whole individuals, forever after. You are already far along that road.’
‘Will we die?’ the two girls asked.
Manda smiled. ‘No, no my dears. For the first time in millennia, you will truly live.’
Then she bent over them, and despite the fear and wonder, something about her words and her face sent them into some kind of beautiful sleep. They dimly felt her prize apart their clasped hands, then each spun away, floating, and free.
Temple of Love
Agra, Uttar Pradesh, September 2011
‘Excusing me, sir,’ said the T-shirt seller in affected English. ‘Would you like to be buying a very fine T-shirt?’ He held up a thin white shirt with bad stitching and dirty hand-smears. A poorly realized drawing of the Taj Mahal, surmounted by the phrase “Temple of Love”, was displayed on the front in garish orange. ‘Only three hundred rupees, sir.’
Amanjit raised a hand, pointing towards the shimmering marble dome in the distance. ‘This is not a Temple of Love!’ he snapped. ‘The guy who built this bankrupted his kingdom, got overthrown and locked away by his own son, and died in prison. Don’t give me your bullshit.’
‘Yes sir!’ The T-shirt vendor blinked. ‘How about two hundred rupees? Very nice T-shirt.’
Amanjit rolled his eyes. Deepika took his hand, and they gazed up at the Taj Mahal. The monument shone in the glorious September sunshine. There were tourists by the thousand, but they were alone, wrapped in solitude and sadness. Or they had been, until the vendor approached.
‘One hundred and fifty, sir? You are my first customer today, so I give you special price.’
‘It’s four o’clock in the afternoon—how can I be your first customer?’
‘I slept late sir. And it has been a very slow day. One hundred and twenty, maybe?’
Deepika dragged Amanjit away before he hit someone. They found a bench and sat in the sunshine, wrapped in their own personal gloom. ‘I don’t understand,’ Amanjit whispered. ‘I don’t know why we can’t all be happy.’
Deepika sighed and shook her head. ‘I don’t know either.’
It wasn’t themselves that they referred to. They were as utterly in love as they had always been. More so, in reality. Deepika no longer flared at the slightest misunderstanding, and Amanjit now reacted to mishaps like a man, not an overgrown child. They still laughed easily and were playful as kittens at times, but they had a dignity too, that was almost regal.
She brushed at his uniform. He had been accepted into the Air Force, and his aptitude in the initial tests had startled the recruitment officers. He had applied with few qualifications, but somehow when the recruiting exam started, he just KNEW most of the answers. They were telling him now that the sky was the limit, without a hint of a jest. He had made it: a fighter-pilot trainee. What had seemed a futile ambition now seemed readily possible.
The two months since Lanka had all been like some kind of dream. They had left Hemant and his people sifting through the wreckage of Lanka. They had left the grieving Asuras to bury Vibhishana. The remaining Asuras loyal to Ravindra had surrendered or fled. There were desultory repairs beginning by the time they left, but Amanjit suspected they may have to abandon the place.
They had returned together to the real world in a state of stunned wonder. Vikram, Ras and Deepika were almost beyond words, so intense those last moments had been. Words had seemed inadequate for what they had gone through. Conversations petered out. But human needs remained.
The girls were both whole, uninjured, and feeling transfigured. Deepika thought she could dance on the surface of a lake if she wanted she felt so good. They were all tremendously hungry. They roomed at the Torun Tourist Camp, and her reunion
with Amanjit was the most glorious night of her life, even more than her wedding night.
But in the morning, Ras and Vikram were both gone. Separately. They had not exchanged more than a few words.
‘It makes no sense. They are Rama and Sita, if anyone is! How can they not be in love? How can they not want to be together?’
Amanjit shrugged helplessly at her. ‘I don’t know, darling. I just don’t know.’
He could walk about freely now, of course. The charges against Vikram, Amanjit and Rasita had been dropped. Two mysterious strangers had slipped into the Mumbai Police Headquarters with enough documentary and video evidence to prove Majid Khan had committed the murder of Sunita Ashoka (the ‘strangers’ were Amanjit and Deepika themselves, the evidence from Ravindra’s rooms in Lanka). The police had issued a statement proclaiming that their interest in the whereabouts of Vikram, Amanjit and Rasita was over. ‘India’s Most Wanted’ could come home. For a few days the media had gone mad, and then again when Amanjit came out of hiding. He’d been a minor celebrity for a while, but told the press little. After a few weeks he had been largely forgotten again. He told the journalists he’d been hiding out in Assam and they believed him. But the one question he couldn’t answer was: ‘Where are Vikram and Rasita?’
Kiran, his mother, Bishin, his brother, and Lalit were living in Jodhpur still, and they visited with them. Ras had written, telling them she ‘needed time and space to think’. That was all they had heard. Then the Air Force recruitment took them back to Delhi, and a proper homecoming with Deepika’s family. This trip to Agra was his first piece of leave since then. They had quarters on the Air Force base now, and Deepika was getting involved in the Air Force Wives’ Association at Willingdon Base, helping run one of their plush shops in Santushti Market.
Suddenly the glaring brightness of the white marble became too much. The ‘Temple of Love’ seemed oppressive. Mocking them and their friends. They rose hand in hand and walked away. ‘Hey,’ Deepika suddenly grinned. ‘I didn’t know all that stuff about the Taj Mahal! Did you make it up?’
‘Nah! I’ve just spent eighteen months trailing after Vik. Droning on and on about historical stuff is what he considers a fun chat. Some of it must have stuck.’ He shook his head. ‘I miss him. Let’s go. I’m over this.’
Deepika nodded. ‘I love you, you know that don’t you?’ she asked softly, as she did every hour or two.
He grinned. ‘Yeah. I’m picking that up.’ He tweaked her nose playfully. ‘Though if you want to prove it some more I know just the place.’ He dangled the hotel keys.
She smiled, put her arm about him, and they drifted through the crowds of tourists and sightseers and guides, seeing only each other.
Dusshera
Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, late-September 2011
Vikram Khandavani wandered aimlessly among the thin clusters of tourists. It was the ‘in-between-season’ for Rishikesh—late for the summer crowd escaping the summer heat, and early for the winter crowds seeking snow. The hotels were half-empty and disinterested, more focused in taking a break and doing running repairs than servicing guests. He was travelling under a false name still, anonymous, which suited him fine.
The Ramayana said that Rama had come here, seeking penance for the killing of Ravana, who despite being evil had been a great man and a follower of Shiva. Propitiation of Shiva was required, apparently. Vikram had no such attacks of conscience—Ravan Aeshwaran had been scum as far as he could work out. He had resisted coming here at all, instead drifting through Jammu and Kashmir on a motorbike for several weeks, telling himself he needed to be alone, consciously avoiding this place. But somehow, he’d ended up here anyway.
There was a big grey Shiva statue beside the river, and the foothills of the Himalaya crowded about, swathed in pine. Mists clung to them, like a comforting blanket. He bathed in the cold headwaters of Mother Ganges but felt no better for it.
He had seen the newspapers—the charges against him had been dropped, the police had announced. He was free to come out of hiding, but he didn’t want to. The idea of being chased and harassed by the media nauseated him, as did the lies he would have to tell, and the tiresome fuss that would be made. And then he would be forgotten again. A no one, as he had started. It was better to just stay a no one, and leave out all that bullshit. He felt like an empty, drained bucket, dumped and forgotten.
India rolled on, with cricket tours and Bollywood blockbusters, economic deals and political scandals. No one knew or cared what he had really done. Sure, the mysterious ambushes of the military had ceased—he could feel pride in that. But little else. His duel with Ravindra, which had consumed sixteen lifetimes, seemed irrelevant, a sideline thing. Two madmen killing each other for the right to be king of somewhere time had forgotten. He felt horribly lonely, drifting from town to town. But he couldn’t face going back.
Dad is dead. Amanjit and Deepika are happy. And Rasita … He was afraid to think of her …
… The morning after the death of Ravan Aeshwaran, he had woken whole, the drugs and the venoms burned from his system. Manda had saved him, he knew. He woke in a daze, surrounded by cheering Meghwal and Asura warriors, dancing like they had won a cricket match.
When they all came together, the four of them, in the aftermath of Ravan Aeshwaran’s final death, he had thought for a fleeting moment that he would die of happiness. He had hugged Amanjit, held Deepika, and then turned to Rasita standing shyly in the corner, waiting for him …
… and then …
They had just looked at each other …
The moment their eyes locked, he had known, and she had known, how false their triumph had been.
She had fallen for Ravindra, beguiled by his lies and his beauty. If Vikram had not realized and attacked in time, she would have married him, giving the Ravan the final key. Then with the power of an enslaved Manda, Ravindra would have slain Vikram, and after, who could ever have stopped him?
And in that same instant, she had looked at him and known what had passed between him and Sue …
They had stared at each other, while Deepika and Amanjit kissed, oblivious.
Then both had turned away.
He didn’t want to see her ever again.
Rasita sat cross-legged, across the fire from the small man with the monkey on his shoulder.
Hemant puffed a pungent marijuana chillum, nodding sympathetically. ‘We are safe now, lady. The remaining Asuras have returned, but with most of the Rakshasa dead, they have sworn not to raid into our world any longer. Only trade.’ Most of the rescued slaves of Lanka had refused to come home to the real world, so terrified were they of leaving the only place most of them knew, the place most had been born in. Only the youngest had been reunited with their distant relatives. The rest remained in mythland-Lanka, rebuilding as free citizens alongside the remaining Asuras. There was no king though. Neither Ravindra nor Vibhishana had an heir. The remaining Rakshasas were squabbling already, but no one had the trust of the Asuras any more, except maybe the healer, Lavanasura.
September was waning. The nights were slowly cooling. It was the marriage season. In every town and city the streets were thronged with wedding parties, full of dancing and singing as the groom rode to his marriage. She found it all unbearable. So she left the towns and cities, and went back to Dholavira.
She was alone in the Meghwal settlement, but she was totally safe. They all knew her. She was safer here than anywhere, except her home. She missed her mother and her brothers. But she felt a restless stirring that kept her from stepping back into that life. Unlike Deepika and Amanjit, who had each other, and ambitions and purpose, she felt haunted and adrift, stuck in some eddy of life’s currents. She wrote a letter home, but knew if she went back, it would be almost impossible to leave again.
‘I am sad, lady, that you are not with Vikramji.’ Hemant stroked the fur of the monkey, and puffed on his cigarette.
Rasita didn’t really want to talk about that. ‘So is there
peace now?’
Hemant let the subject be changed. ‘They have left messages with your military authorities, advising that the “Sons of Ravan” have forsaken their terror campaign. There is talk of anonymous payments to the families of the dead soldiers.’
‘Has there been any change with Keke?’
Hemant shook his head slowly. ‘No, lady. I am sorry.’ He had heard of the fatal heroism of the Rakshasa girl and the other women in the bathing pool. ‘She still sleeps.’
Ras bowed her head. Keke had fallen into a coma and not woken, though she still clung to life. A sad story among many. Lavanasura had dozens of patients in his hospital wards. Kasun was still with them too, using his modern medical learning to wondrous effect.
Hemant leaned forward. ‘In the Ramayana, after he has rescued Sita, Lord Rama made her walk through a fire, to prove her fidelity to him. I am thinking that there are fires both of you must walk through, to find peace.’ He opened his hand, in a pleading gesture. ‘Go to him, lady. For all of us.’
She swallowed a lump in her throat, and slowly shook her head. Those cursed photographs replayed in her mind. And her own folly. I nearly cost us everything … ‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I just can’t.’
Fireworks exploded over the river, wave upon wave of explosions like an artillery duel. Smoke rolled over the water, and the boom of the rockets echoed about the mist-clad hills. Children danced with sparklers and car horns blared. There was music through the streets. People spilled out, laughing and cheery from the richest to the poorest. Swarg Ashram, with all its yoga centres and meditation schools and tourist lodges, was overflowing with life. Indians and Westerners blended confidently, in couples and large groups. The suspension bridges, the Ram Jhula and Lakshman Jhula, were thronging with pedestrians watching the fireworks.