RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR

by AKB eBOOKS Ashok K. Banker

  ‘That is most heartening, my friend,’ Rama said. ‘And I am warmed to the core to hear you speak of dharma. But when you speak of my being on this earth for thousands of years and of blood-oaths you owe me that I have no recollection or knowledge of, then I am bewildered. What do you mean?’

  ‘We mean what we say, Rama,’ the bear king said around a mouthful of custard apple which he was eating from the inside out; the large, black seeds spilled freely out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Although we do not always say what we mean, for we find that the world has changed greatly and as this age comes to a close, the same words mean different things to different beings.

  It was not always so. There was once a time when we were all one, and we all lived in the forest, and there were no divisions between us, even though we were of different colours, races, species, furred and non-furred, limbed and limbless, bodied and bodiless. There was no conflict between the devas and the asuras in those days, and the race we call mortals now did not exist as a separate thing. For that matter, this realm itself was of no real consequence, merely a way station between planes, a place where gandharvas came to make love, and apsaras frolicked and rakshaks came to hunt and play—for they were not called rakshasas then as they are now and were not considered evil.’ He spat out the last of the seeds, looked at the scoured-out greenish peel of the fruit and shook his head. ‘For that matter, this word, evil. In those days, there was no such demarcation, good and evil.’ He emphasised each word with accents of bitter irony. ‘It was all one. Sometimes, someone wronged another. That did not make one evil, nor the other good.’

  Rama’s head was spinning. He saw Hanuman looking at him and tried to convey a plea through a look; he could not think of a way to convey his confusion without offending the bear lord.

  Hanuman nodded almost imperceptibly, reading his plea, and spoke up. ‘My lord Jambavan. Perhaps it would be meet to let King Rama know the circumstances of your earlier meeting— ’ he made a show of clearing his throat carefully, a conspicuously unvanarlike gesture, ‘—in this lifetime.’

  From somewhere along the beachfront came a curious thudding sound, followed by a loud vanar cheer.

  Jambavan frowned at the rind of the custard apple, as if only just noticing it. ‘Oh. Yes. Of course. There are wars to be fought yet. Time enough for such talk at the end of days.’ He popped the rind in his mouth and apparently swallowed it without chewing, for his jaws did not work for several moments. Finally, he started as if coming out of a reverie, shook his snout vigorously, spewing a seed or two upon his companions’ heads— they continued eating unperturbed—and said, ‘It was before the unleashing of the brahm-astra at Mithila. You came to the aid of the princess Sita and her bodyguard Nakhudi, although they were disguised then and you did not recognise their true identities. You and they fought side by side against some brutish oafs.’

  ‘Bearface,’ Lakshman exclaimed. ‘He and his outlaws were killing bears, they had cornered a mother and her cubs, and Sita and Nakhudi were fending them off. When we came on the scene, they gave up the fight in a hurry.’

  ‘You?’ Rama said incredulously to the enormous black-furred bear seated before him. ‘You were one of those cubs?’

  Jambavan shrugged, then gestured at the bear beside him, whom he had introduced as his brother Kambunara earlier. ‘We both were. Along with our sister Sharik, who was eager to join your war but was heavy with child again—her fifteenth, actually. But other than that, she is alive and well too. Our mother, whom you also saved that day, gave up her present form some few dozen moons past. But her spirit accompanies us. Even now as we speak, she sits there on the branch of that tree and watches over us intently.’ Jambavan squinted upwards as if listening to an inner voice. ‘She finds you quite handsome still for a human. Although she feels you have grown too thin and straggly. Eat more honey. Honey mends all wounds.’

  Rama resisted the temptation to glance at the branch of the tree behind his left shoulder. He also wondered how, if bears could die like any mortal creature, they presumed to know things that had occurred thousands upon thousands of years ago. But he had no desire to get Jambavan launched upon another of his baffling meandering monologues, and said instead, ‘And that is why you came to help us today in our effort? Because we saved you that day as cubs?’

  Jambavan lowered his head and squinted at Rama, the way an old lady might peer to correct her short-sightedness. Rama recalled that bears were indeed believed to be short-sighted. The thudding sound came again, closer this time. ‘If you wish to believe so, you may. These are minor matters.’

  Rama decided to leave it at that. ‘Then I am doubly honoured by your support. First, for the purely selfish joy of having saved you and your family’s lives those long years ago, and second, for your nobly offering those same lives to my cause.’

  Jambavan snorted. ‘You are most welcome, Rama. But make no mistake of it. We have no intention of doing any sacrificing. We have come here to fight alongside you and help you win! The sacrificing will all be on the Lankan side! Ho ho ho ho!’

  He slapped his great thighs, coughing violently with bearish laughter. The rest of the bear entourage all joined him, gruffly chuffing their merriment. After a moment, the vanars laughed too, and Rama and Lakshman allowed themselves the luxury of grinning along. Somewhere nearby the sound of thudding came again, this time in a rapid sequence, like a pile of rocks falling through a roof during an avalanche. Rama glanced back over his shoulder and finally discovered the source: the vanars had climbed the palm trees in the grove beside theirs, and were throwing coconuts down to crack them open. Other vanars followed their example, and in moments every tree along the beachfront was filled with vanars climbing and plucking and tossing coconuts. Vanars on the ground below issued enthusiastic cheekas and danced to avoid the falling rain of coconuts, snatching the broken-open ones and fighting to drink the sweet nourishing milk and malai within. Not to be outdone, the bears were standing in groups beneath the date palms and were shaking them vigorously enough to dislodge large clumps of dates, grunting as some clutches fell onto their own well-insulated heads.

  Kambunara gained his feet, roaring. ‘Fools! Rotten fish-smellers! Stop that! You will wake the—’

  Before he could finish, a new sound arose, a susurrating hissing, like a thousand serpents awakened in a nest. All the bear leaders pricked up their ears their, button-hole black eyes glinting with an unnameable emotion, and Rama saw Jambavan sigh deeply, then raise his paws to cover his head as he bent over.

  ‘Brace yourselves,’ Rama heard him say, with exaggerated calmness.

  Pandemonium erupted as a cloud of black-winged chittering things burst free from the eaves of the trees in which they had been slinging in inverted sleep until now. The bears had been right after all. There were bats in the groves. Lots and lots of bats.

  EIGHT

  They were on the beach, baking in the sunlight after being evicted by the noisome foul-smelling exodus of the bats—the ‘bat sena’ as Jambavan ironically referred to them—when Sakra came bounding up the beach, sending showers of sand flying over a clutch of bears sitting morosely around, with a whoop of excitement. Hanuman calmed him down sufficiently enough to understand that some vanars foraging for food a few miles south had brought word that they had discovered Mount Mahendra. The news brought grins to the snouts of all the vanar generals. The Kiskindha vanars who had accompanied Rama and Lakshman here had been aiming for that very spot but had been disoriented by the sea- mist. Angad was exceedingly pleased that they had found the legendary mount.

  From all accounts, it appeared to be the closest point on the coast to the strait that separated the continent and the island of Lanka. The scouts claimed that there were two mountains on the promontory and from the top of the taller mountain, you could just manage to glimpse Lanka. Rama decided that they ought to go see for themselves right away, and of course, everyone wished to follow their inspiring new leader, so it turned into a veritable march. The dista
nce was easily enough crossed, and it was still afternoon when they climbed the first ‘mountain’ which turned out to be little more than a large mound, barely worthy of being called a hill. The legendary ‘Mount’ Mahendra itself was no more than two hundred yards tall and seemed unlikely to be the same familiar peak mentioned in so many ancient legends and tales, but Rama had no wish to question the identity of what was clearly a talismanic place to both the vanars and bears—and, come to think of it, to his own kind as well.

  He glanced back from the promontory of the mountain— for he was resigned to referring to it as a mountain to avoid needless controversy—and saw a remarkable sight.

  The mountain was unevenly raised, the north side closer to the sea level than the south side. The south side gave way onto a raised cliff-like runway that extended for at least a mile before losing itself in a thickly wooded spur where the coastline curved sharply inwards again. So, looking south, you could certainly term this a mountain, and a quite majestic one at that, with its white, flowering crocuses and snow firs, a most unusual fauna for a coastal locale. Looking north, as he was right now, it was much less, of course, but that only added to its sense of grandeur, the deceptive ordinariness on one side and the sweeping picturesque swoop on the other. The west side gave way sharply to a steep fall. Glancing down cautiously, for the foam-flecked waves were a good four hundred yards below, he saw that the drop was almost sheer, the face made up of the same blackrock that was seen so plentifully along the coastline here, and covered with lichenous moss, freshly green from the recent rains. The ocean lay spread out below like a great blue quilt, patched with darker and lighter sections which he thought at first were caused by clouds. Then he observed the absence of clouds in the sky and puzzled over the phenomenon for a moment before dismissing it to a remote section of his mind. He often did that when he encountered a problem or puzzling thing that could not be resolved at once; tucked it away into some basement chamber of his brain, where the idle part of his mind ticked away relentlessly, until suddenly one day, perhaps hours, days or even, in some cases, years hence, he would find an answer to the question and fit both parts together to complete the puzzle picture.

  Stepping away from the edge, he glanced back the way they had just come and was heart-stopped by yet another breathtaking sight. He could see his armies more clearly now than he had been able to from the blackrock ridge, and they made an incredible sight. A dense forest of black, brown, and mottled mixtures of furry bears shambling towards Mahendra, alongside hundreds of ragged lines of scampering vanars. The lines extended so far, it seemed that it must go on forever, across the length of the coastline and across the stubbly chin of Jambudwipa’s face, which was a term he had learned from the bears. Their geography described the sub-continent as a giant face-like shape surrounded by ocean on three sides. By their reckoning, they were now on the lower left side of the chin. They used the ancient name for the land, Jambudwipa; literally, Land of the Jambun tree, for as Rama was fast discovering, bears tended to name virtually everything with food references.

  His attention focussed on the vanar armies below, winding their way along the narrow beachfront and through the rim of palm groves and denser forests that lined the coast, and he found he could make out the different tribe-nations easily from this vantage point.

  At first the vanars had seemed all much alike. But as the day had passed and he had come into closer contact with many individual vanars, including their appointed captains and generals, he had come to see them as quite distinct breeds. There were the Kiskindha vanars with whom he was already so familiar, and he had come to think of them as typical of their race, their fur a motley variation of browns, usually the males darker-furred than the females, the younguns more thickly furred, the olduns greying at the tops of their heads and along their spines. Their tails all a more or less similar yard or so in length. But then there were the Mandara vanars, whose occupation was silver-mining, and who proudly displayed jewellery. Their most striking feature were their immense earrings, often dangling pendulously down to their shoulders. They had silver piercings on their bellybuttons, and elsewhere on their light-coloured bodies as well, but the earrings were mesmeric in the intricacy of their design and symbolism. These vanars were covered with creamish, wheatish shades of fur, and their tails were thin and long, as much as a yard and a foot, and stood a good foot or more taller than their Kiskindha comrades. They looked noticeably more delicate, and bore themselves with a noble dignity that, coupled with their silver ornamentation and slender forms, was quite beautiful to behold.

  In stark contrast to the Mandaras were the Mandehas, who claimed to come from a place where they hung upside down (like bats, as Jambavan remarked inevitably) from mountain crevices and abjured exposure to the sun. If exposed unwittingly—or on account of some important work, as in the present circumstance—they believed that they would be burned by the heat of the sun and fall into the ocean to die, and would be resurrected the next dawn, to repeat the same cycle all over again. This mythology notwithstanding, they were possessed of fur that was strikingly jet black, nary a spot of brown or any other shade on even a single one, were taller even than the Mandara vanars, but with much shorter tails, barely a foot and a half long, which they wore curled up close to their bodies, giving them a near-human gait. At first glance, they seemed utterly hairless to Rama’s sight. Then he saw that they had as much fur as their brothers, but that fur was softer, thinner, sparser, more downy, and clung closer to their bodies, giving them that peculiar hairless appearance at a distance. They stood with a gloomy, fatalistic manner that was striking beside the cheerful childishness of the Kiskindha vanars or even the proud vanity of the Mandaras. And their numbers were substantially more than any other vanar tribe-nation, so much more that Rama thought they might compose a good third or more of the entire vanar corps. They had a tendency to cluster close together, and to stand in the shade, staying very still, so, with their dark colouring, they blended in masterfully with the landscape, virtually becoming part of it. They more or less followed an ancient female whose own pelt had no doubt once been as jet black as their own, but had been whitened by time’s inevitable repainting. General Vinat was either the grandson or the grandson of the brother of this venerable leader.

  Next came a breed of vanars that was shockingly distinct. At first, Rama thought that these were the elders of all the other tribes, collected into one large contingent, the way that Kosala marshalled all its veterans into a single regiment which was named the Purana Wafadars. He thought this because these vanars were all grey-backed, or whitefur as they were known in vanar parlance. Again, he looked at them more intently and saw that their pelts were less grey or white than a dense silvery texture that actually glimmered in the emerging sunlight. And yet they were young, as young and virile as any of their colouredfur vanar compatriots lined up beside them. They moved with a jaunty confidence that naturally attracted attention, several turning cartwheels, some springing off the linked palms of their comrades to somersault madly in the air, issuing ulullations, others yodelling and rolling across the grass like little balls of vanar fur. For they were smaller than the other vanars, and broader too. The other distinctive feature of this group was the splash of colour each one sported on their forelocks. Dyeing their heads with vegetable inks, they evidently used colour groupings to mark their troops into marching groups, for the pink-tips were all in more or less one cluster, the yellows in another, the indigos in a third, and so on. They seemed somewhat less in number than any of their fellow-nations but more than made up for it by attracting more attention than all the rest combined! These were the Jatarupas.

  Rama could have spent several hours more observing the differences between the various vanars, and he had yet to come to differentiate between the different breeds of bears, but the company on the promontory was already engaged in an intense discussion on the various means to be used to cross to Lanka.

  ‘Ships,’ Lakshman was saying. ‘We must build
ships to take our armies across the ocean to Lanka. There is no other way.’

  Jambavan raised his snout as if to sniff the sky itself. Atop the mountain, clothed in golden afternoon sunlight, the bear king was a formidable sight, his fur bristling, its tips gleaming. His black eyes glinted against the sunlight, his ears twitching. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘It cannot be done by ship.’

  Lakshman folded his arms across his chest and stared coldly. ‘How else does one cross an ocean.’ He jerked his head down at the breathtaking view below the cliff. ‘By swimming across?’

  Jambavan wiggled his ears, the rest of him staying absolutely still. Amusing as it appeared, Rama had a feeling that the bear king’s intention was not to amuse. He decided he must master bear language as well as the various vanar dialects. How was he to communicate effectively and quickly with the troops upon the field of battle if he did not even know what their gestures and actions meant? Unlike mortals who considered the concealing of true feelings and their responses to be a sign of maturity, vanars and bears naturally expressed themselves freely through such gestures.

  Kambunara spoke for his brother. ‘If you wish, we will swim the ocean. Bears hunt for their food in waters far colder than these sun-baked saltsprings.’

  Lakshman rolled his eyes despairingly. ‘The question is not how warm or cold the water is. Unlike the springs you may be accustomed to wading through to catch your fish, this mass of water is vast, vaster than anything you can imagine. There are great sea creatures living within these waters that are as large as this mountain itself.’

  ‘This we know,’ Kambunara sniffed. ‘The children of Varuna are kith and kin to us bears. Our ancestors lived and mated together until our forebears chose to come upon the land to populate the land in accordance with Lord Brahma’s wishes, while Varuna and his offspring chose to remain in the saltsprings.’