RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR

by AKB eBOOKS Ashok K. Banker

  For a brief, hallucinatory moment, he thought he saw a shadow some yards behind Lakshman, a dark, top-heavy shadow with a head too wide to be human. He frowned, his fist tightening upon his sword hilt, starting to draw the blade out. Just then the mist swirled and cleared briefly, leaving naught but an open space behind Lakshman, and he blinked, putting it down to a trick of the weather. Still, his fist remained upon the hilt of his sword.

  If only the sun would shine through just for a few moments. He could almost empathise with the vanars. Being near the one place that every vanar feared from birth—a vast, bottomless body of briny fluid that would swallow you up without a second thought—was bad enough in this fog; not being able to see the sun overhead was pure torture. Rama’s skin, burned black as it was through years of over-exposure, had never been fair to begin with, and to him, sunlight on his back, burning his skin and searing his senses, was as much a part of normality as the air he breathed and the water he drank. It was the absence of sunlight that bothered him, though he was disciplined enough not to let it distract him. After all, he was of the Suryavansha line; the dynasty that claimed proud descent from the sun god Surya deva himself. It was not for nothing that the brahmarishi Vishwamitra had picked high noon as the time for him to make his final assault upon the giant demoness Taraka in the Bhayanak-van. The sun was his totem, his energy-giver and succour. Not having its warm hand upon his shoulders made him feel bereft, abandoned.

  ‘Rama,’ Lakshman said, dropping to his knees on the sandy patch below the rock on which Rama stood. ‘He is here. Hanuman has arrived.’

  Rama’s heart leaped. Finally! Rama dropped down from the rock, putting himself on the same level as his brother. ‘Where is he? Why did you not bring him with you?’

  Lakshman was quiet. Not because he had run himself out of breath—it would take many days’ running to get Lakshman out of breath—but because he was unable to find words to express himself. Rama waited, knowing his brother well enough to give him the space and time he needed. But he was impatient to see Hanuman, to embrace the vanar, to clap him on his bony back and smell his sour odour again.

  ‘One of Angad’s vanars brought the message. He said Hanuman was close on his heels.’ Lakshman’s tone gave no clue to his emotions, but Rama sensed a faint whiff of disappointment. Lakshman had awaited Hanuman’s return as eagerly as Rama.

  ‘And the armies?’

  Lakshman shrugged. ‘The angadia,’—for that was what Angad’s vanars called themselves, a term that was synonymous with ‘courier’ or ‘messenger’—‘only spoke of Hanuman. He said nothing about any army or armies.’

  Rama was unperturbed. They must be close behind. ‘King Sugreeva said that Hanuman would gather the other vanar tribe-armies and bring them here. I am sure Hanuman would not come here unless he has gathered them.’

  Lakshman raised his head and looked up at Rama. His face had grown intensely thin these past months. Too thin, Rama felt. Such thinness gave him a slight aspect of cruelty, as of a man who had endured much at the hands of his enemies and was willing to make his enemies endure much more in return. It did not dominate his face, his strikingly intense close-set eyes and broad nose still made him as attractive and wholesome as ever, but that touch of cruelty, a warrior’s aspect, had not been there a few months earlier. ‘Perhaps we have placed too much faith in Hanuman.’

  ‘There is no such thing as too much faith, brother. One either has faith or does not have it.’ Rama smiled reassuringly at Lakshman. ‘Have no doubt, Hanuman will come with the armies we were promised. We shall have a force sufficient to invade Lanka.’

  Lakshman shrugged, rising slowly to his feet. He had a defeated air about him that Rama did not like. ‘Perhaps he will at that. And even so, it may not matter.’

  ‘How could it not matter? If he brings a vanar sena large enough to make a strong assault, we shall have a fighting chance of breaching Ravana’s defenses.’

  Lakshman sighed. ‘A vanar sena. An army of talking apemen. How large could it be? We saw what King Sugreeva called the army of Kiskindha. It was barely equivalent to one regiment of PFs. And untrained, undisciplined and inexperienced to boot. What good would a few thousand more vanars like that be?’

  Lakshman turned away from Rama, looking out to sea. There was nothing to be seen in that direction—the mistbank was thickest there. Rama saw his profile, thin and hard, and felt his brother’s frustration, saw his bitterness glistening in his angry eyes. ‘It would take the king of devas to raise an army fit to invade Lanka anyway. What were we thinking, going to vanars for help?’ He turned suddenly, clutched Rama’s sword hand. ‘Rama. It’s still not too late. Even now we can return home, to Ayodhya. Raise the Kosala army. Why, we could ask the other united Arya nations for aid, they would not refuse us. We could be back here within a month with a real army! With ships! And siege machines! Then we could sail to Lanka and knock on Ravana’s doors with the might of Aryavarta at our backs.’

  Rama gripped Lakshman’s hand tightly. ‘Lakshman, I told you, I will not debate with you anymore. I cannot take us back to Ayodhya until our term of exile is done. Why do you persist in arguing this point?’

  ‘Because our exile is only a season and a half away from ending, bhai!’ Lakshman’s voice was plaintive and pleading. ‘A few months! What difference can it make?’

  Rama released Lakshman’s shoulder and turned away. ‘Fourteen years, the terms were clear. On my naming day in the month of Chaitra, we shall return home to Ayodhya, not a day before.’

  ‘We shall all be dead by the month of Chaitra!’ Lakshman blurted.

  Rama turned to look at him. Lakshman’s face was flushed, whether from running or from emotion, but he stood his ground and did not look away, nor take back his words. Rama reminded himself that Lakshman had endured much, and he weighed his brother’s outbursts in the light of that knowledge. His voice was still calm and gentle when he spoke again. ‘My brother, why do you lose faith so easily? When faith is the greatest weapon in our pitifully small arsenal?’

  ‘No, Rama,’ Lakshman said bitterly. ‘It is the only weapon. Your faith is our entire arsenal.’

  Rama considered that. ‘It is a great weapon. Faith can move mountains.’

  Lakshman issued a brief sound that might have been a choked laugh. ‘And cross oceans?’ He gestured behind Rama. ‘That ocean in particular? Because I don’t know how else we can take a force of cringing, talking monkeys across that particular ocean to fight the king of demons in his own stronghold.’

  ‘You must not lose hope, Lakshman,’ Rama said, worried now. Lakshman had never been happy about their turning to the vanars for help, but Rama had thought he had come to accept their newfound allies. He was alarmed by this display of bitterness and dejection. ‘We will cross the ocean. The vanars have great reserves of strength. It is we who must learn to tap those reserves, to show them what they are capable of achieving. If we lose hope, how can we lead them? They look to us for inspiration and example.’

  Lakshman shook his head, sinking onto the rock on which Rama had stood earlier. He sat upon it in an attitude of dejection, burying his face in his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Rama. You can continue stoking a spark in a winter storm. I don’t possess such unshakeable faith. All I see are a group of mangy monkeys who skulk in trees at the sight of a little mist and oceanfront. How we can transform that ragtag bunch into a fighting army capable of invading Lanka is beyond my comprehension.’

  ‘But Hanuman is here now,’ Rama said, unwilling to accept Lakshman’s dejection. He had talked his brother out of these moods of depressions before, he would do so a hundred more times if need be. ‘He will have brought the remaining vanar armies with him. And the additional army that Sugreeva spoke of, which we know nothing about. Now we shall have a substantial enough number to launch an invasion. Our strength in numbers will make up for the lack of war-experience of our sena.’

  Lakshman stared up at Rama with glistening eyes. ‘Listen to you. Planning to cros
s an ocean with an army terrified of water! But nothing can dampen your spirits. You still speak and act with as much vigour as if you’re leading the combined forces of all mortalkind!’ He struggled back to his feet with a weariness that Rama knew was more spiritual than physical. ‘But I fear that even your stout heart will shudder when you see what Hanuman has brought with him. I fear that your hope and your faith have been unfounded, Rama. Our efforts to raise an army to rescue Sita have come to naught. We have no army worth speaking of.’

  Before Rama could respond, a voice boomed through the mist.

  ‘No army, you say, brother Lakshman? Then what do you call this force that follows me?’

  Rama turned to see a great vanar striding towards him. It took him a moment to comprehend what his eyes were seeing. He could not believe at first that this magnificent specimen, massively muscled, bold of step and glittering of eye, could possibly be the meek, reed-thin vanar who had first approached him so hesitantly in the wilderness of Janasthana. ‘Hanuman?’ he asked, shocked. ‘Anjaneya? Maruti Whiteleaf?’ They were all the names he knew for his vanar friend. ‘Is it truly you?’

  Hanuman approached Rama and Lakshman with great loping strides, then dropped to one knee before them, joining his hands together in a perfect namaskaram, something most vanars could not achieve because of the way their hands were shaped. He bore a great, gleaming golden mace upon one shoulder, and he held that easily in the crook of his arm as he greeted Rama and Lakshman in a voice of warm reverence.

  ‘Pranaam to you my lord Rama, my lord Lakshman. I have returned with your grace to serve you and your cause. Behold. I bring with me the fruition of your hopes and the vindication of your faith in me.’

  And as he gestured behind him with a proud flourish, a deep rumbling rose from the ground beneath their feet like an earthquake announcing its approach.

  SIX

  A wind sprang up, as if called by Hanuman himself. Rama had sensed its approach for a while now, had been awaiting this very change in direction that had brought the ocean mist to obscure the shorefront. But even so, its timing was remarkably coincidental. Or perhaps, as some wise sage had once said, perhaps even one of his own venerable ancestors: When you take positive action without fear or doubt, then your well-deserved victory is not a coincidence. The wind tugged at the ends of his matted locks, ruffled the coarse cloth of his garment. The mist that had enveloped them so completely until now was shredded into fluttering strands that clung hopelessly to the edges of things before being cast away. In moments, the entire ridge began to clear, the seashore swept by an invisible thrashbroom. Above, the cloudy murk that had obscured the skies was dissipating fast, worked on by the same ocean gale. The glimpses of sky through the gaps was not the steely azure blue Rama had wished for, rather, it was a wild and stormy sky, the kind of sky one would expect over a stormfront. But the sun was coming out, and the fleeting touches of warmth and spears of brilliance penetrating through were reward aplenty.

  As the light and wind grew in intensity, the rumbling sound grew ever louder. Rama had guessed at its origin, but even knowing the likely cause of the disturbance did not diminish its sheer power. The very rocky ridge upon which they stood was trembling beneath their feet. Few things short of an actual earthquake could produce such an effect. It was impressive.

  Hanuman regained his feet. He stood before Rama, hands still clasped in the reverential namaskaram. His face shone with a glow of pure vitality. What has he been feeding on, Rama wondered? The nectar of the devas?

  ‘My friend. It is so good to have you back.’ Rama went forward without hesitation and embraced Hanuman. The vanar opened his arms and clasped Rama with an intensity that made Rama feel that he could as easily have been crushed as hugged. Was this truly the same Hanuman? It hardly seemed possible. ‘You are well returned to us, by the grace of the devas.’

  ‘Nay, Rama. With your grace,’ Hanuman corrected mildly. ‘Your name was the mantra which led me to the successful achievement of my goals. All this that I am about to present to you, is the fruition of your own great deeds and adherence to dharma. I am only the courier who bears the glad tidings, not the creator of this glorious karma.’

  Rama looked at Hanuman. The vanar’s eyes shone with powerful intensity. His words were mesmeric, the deepthroatedness of his speech wholly unlike the hesitant, self-doubting Hanuman of only a few weeks ago. ‘And this transformation that has been wrought in your person, my friend? I am so pleased to see you in such excellent form. To what is owed this wonderful change?’

  Hanuman inclined his head. ‘Again, it is your grace, my lord. You alone have sustained me through the past several weeks of questing and fasting.’

  ‘Fasting?’ This came from Lakshman, whose surprise was great enough to overcome even his deep reservations. ‘You look like one who has been feasting not fasting, vanar!’

  Hanuman inclined his head respectfully at Lakshman. ‘In that case, brother Lakshman, perhaps you may call it the result of my spiritual feasting and physical fasting.’

  He turned back to Rama. ‘My lord, I will gladly relate to you the adventures that I have experienced since taking your leave at Mount Rishimukha. Now, I have something wonderful to present to you. The purpose of my travels was fulfilled. The armies that you sought have been assembled. All of them and more besides. Now, I give unto you, as promised by my lord and liege, King Sugreeva, in exchange for the favours done by you that helped him regain his usurped kingdom, in his own words, the armies that will lead you to victory against the forces of Lanka.’

  While they had been speaking, the wind had blown away the last vestiges of ocean mist. The sun had begun shining down through the stormy cloud-ridden sky, illuminating the landscape in a purple-tinted light that enhanced the desolateness of the place. The cape on which they stood was a rocky shoal tinged with a little sand, a blackstone border between the subcontinent and the vast indigo ocean. Behind the ridge of blackstone was a lush, green valley, sloping down to the edge of the jungle that was brethren to the countless undulating yojanas of similar jungle that traversed the whole subcontinent, all the way upto the slopes of the mighty Himalaya itself. The valley extended a mere thousand yards before it was overrun by the jungle.

  From that jungle, as Rama and Lakshman watched, emerged an army. Nay, armies. For as he had been instructed, Hanuman had travelled to secure the support of all the separate major vanar forces scattered across the land. Rama recognised the familiar brown-black pelts of the vanars of Kiskindha, lured from their treetops by the arrival of their compatriots. They emerged from the edge of the extreme thicket at the extreme right, whooping and cheering loudly, beating their chests with their paws. Some came somersaulting, turning cartwheels, bounding in that ape-like way that only vanars could achieve, loping, shambling, rolling as younguns were wont to do, for there were many younguns here, and olduns too, which itself told him how extensive the mobilisation must be, for the tribes to give up every vanar, male or female, young or old, as long as they were capable of fighting. They streamed out from the cover of the jungle and onto the narrow stretch of sloping, grassy valley, emerging endlessly, until the valley was filled with vanars standing chest to back and shoulder to shoulder and no more could be accommodated, and still they came, climbing onto one another’s shoulders, building little pyramids the way he had seen the Kiskindha vanars do when they wished to reach some high object that could not be reached by climbing, and after a moment, he realised that it was he they were crowding to see, the mortal yoddha whose war they were going to fight, whose mate they were seeking to retrieve, Prince Rama Chandra of Ayodhya, trusted ally of King Sugreeva of Kiskindha, slayer of Vali the Usurper, bloodfriend of Hanuman.

  The valley below was thick with vanars now, so densely packed that not a blade of grass was visible any longer. While they had assembled, for the large part silently, marked only by the natural grunting, snuffling, wheezing-sneezing of vanars, the sun had emerged from its jungle of mist and cloud as well, and sho
ne now upon them all, bathing them in a golden late-morning glow, beaming down in pillars and pathways of light that seemed to reach all the way up to the heavens, like lights beamed down by the devas themselves to illuminate this great gathering. And still they came, from the cover of the trees into the open land, which was no longer open but covered from end to end with vanars.

  Rama turned to look at Lakshman who was staring down with round, amazed eyes. A trace of his earlier bitterness still remained on his face, like a crease in a wrung cloth, but in place of anger and despair there was incredulity. He sensed Rama’s gaze on him then and looked up, meeting his brother’s eyes.

  Lakshman choked on whatever he meant to say, then cleared his throat and asked: ‘How many?’

  The question was directed to Hanuman. Both Rama and Lakshman turned their eyes on him. Hanuman stood with his mace on his right shoulder, his left arm crossed across his chest languidly, like a man who had battled a war and already won.

  ‘We do not count as you do, my lords. But you see here before you, every single living vanar capable of combat in our collective tribe-nations.’

  Rama was not sure he had heard correctly. ‘Did you say every single living vanar, my friend? Surely you do not mean that literally?’

  Hanuman looked puzzled. ‘What else would I mean?’ He gestured at the great mass of life below them. ‘Apart from the carrying females, the nursing and the nursed, the sick and invalid, the old and feeble, I have collected every one of my kind and gathered them together.’

  Rama exchanged a glance with Lakshman who seemed as flabbergasted as he did. Lakshman shook his head, unable to express his response. Rama had to search his mind to find words to express what he was feeling: it was not easy. ‘This is more than an army, my friend. This is … ’ He did not know what name to give such a thing.