A rumbling began above them, pulling his gaze upwards. A chorus of bear howls and shouts broke out atop the mountain. Rama looked up and saw the edge give way completely, crumbling and breaking into fragmented slabs of earth and stone. Bears fell, a dozen, perhaps twice that number, to certain death. But they were not the ones who cried out. The ones crying out were those on the mountain, who were able to move aside and save themselves in time, as the boulder’s weight overcame them at last. Rama saw Lakshman reach the top of the mountain and grab hold of Jambavan, shouting something incoherent. The bear king shook himself free of Lakshman’s grasp and raised his snout to the sky, issuing a cry that carried as far as a conchshell trumpet on a battlefield. It was a wordless cry, for there were no words to describe what the bear king must feel at such a moment; a final appeal to his parents, the devas. Nala howled out a last despairing wail, clutching his tail in grief. Around them, bears and vanars scattered away from the disintegrating cliff-edge, screaming with dismay and grief at the calamity that was upon them all and their inability to prevent it from happening. Lakshman let loose a cry of such anguish that it pierced Rama’s heart like an arrow.
The massive rock hung suspended on the lip of the cliff, as debris and doomed bears fell beneath its curve. Then, with a grinding, gnashing sound like a giant pair of iron jaws coming together, it began its great descent.
On the beach below, thousands of vanars and bears cried out. If it would save their fellow bears and Hanuman, Rama knew, they would gladly have rushed forward to put their own fragile bodies in the path of the tumbling rock. But such a sacrifice would be of no avail; it would only add to the death count. He gestured sharply to them to move back out of harm’s way, shouting a wordless command. Then he turned and focussed his energy one final time upon Hanuman. He put every ounce of will into this plea, knowing that this was their last hope.
‘We all have need of your power of faith. Unleash your strength now, son of Anjaneya and Vayu, and save us all! I, Rama, command it!’
Time seemed to crawl like an ant carrying a leaf ten times its size up a tree-trunk. Rama heard the rumbling as the boulder left the clifftop and started its descent, striking glancing blows to the cliff face as it came. Each nick and nudge carried sufficient force to dislodge whole chunks of rock from the cliff, and these followed in the wake of the rock itself. It would be a small avalanche that fell, not just a stone. He was glad the beach itself was cleared. If his desperate attempt failed, then all of them here on this stretch of sandy, wave-lapped seafront would surely be killed in moments but at least no more lives would be lost. Lakshman’s voice howled in despair from the clifftop, barely audible above the rumbling, gnashing chaos of the mounting avalanche. Rama could make out only one word: ‘Rama!’
There was no time to call back an answer, to tell Lakshman to continue the war and retrieve Sita at any cost, not to waste time grieving for him when he was gone. Even this thought barely entered to his mind then was gone. He continued to focus his energy upon the vanar beneath the rock. Awaken. Awaken! AWAKEN!
A great wail rose from the beach as his followers realised that he, their leader, was in harm’s way. There was nothing to be done. Without turning his head, he could see that the rock was almost at the bottom of the cliff: it filled his peripheral vision. Time still continued to move at ant’s pace, enlarging each heartbeat to what seemed like whole moments.
He saw the bears before him stirring, their snouts opening to issue forth grunts and growls of an unidentifiable emotion. Brave as they were, it was too much to expect that they would not fear mortality. His heart swelled with pride that so many had put their lives at risk for his cause. So many brave and great warriors had joined him in this final war. And after he was gone, he knew that his body would be carried in state, a thousand thousand shoulders offering themselves gladly to bear that last burden. As many pairs of eyes would weep copious tears when they heard of his demise back in Ayodhya. To have lived well, loved greatly, fought and won every battle he engaged in, to have remained faithful to the laws of dharma to the very end, and to be remembered by so many after his passing. What more could a man ask for?
I would ask for Sita, his heart cried. For her freedom from that villain’s tyrannous captivity. For justice.
‘Rama.’
He blinked and started to look around. Yet knew at once that the voice came not from any around him. It came from within his mind. The speaking served to dispel the trance he had fallen under, and the world returned to normal time. At that very moment, the rock landed at the foot of the cliff, falling upon the backs of its brother stones.
The impact was shattering. The ground shook, as if shaken by a giant hand. An explosion of rock and shards and debris issued out, sending deadly missiles flying in every direction, each one a potential life-taker, as the great rock itself, lightly chipped and barely scathed by its fall, struck the hardrock crags and rebounded into the air, flying directly at them, at the bears carrying the other rock, and at Rama himself. It loomed like a dark sun falling out of the sky onto his world, the final irony in this unequal battle that was his life—the rock meant for his own bridge would be the one to kill him. Like the black fist of Yama-raj, the lord of death, it fell towards him.
‘Rama,’ said the voice again, booming in the caverns of his consciousness, denying that fate, rebelling against life itself, against the falling fist of Yama.
And with a great unified groan, the bears shrugged off their immense burden.
Or that was how it seemed at first. As if they flailed their furclad limbs and the boulder rose up into the air.
But then they all raised their snouts and peered upwards with eyes widened by shock and awe.
For the boulder had not been thrown up, it had been lifted. Not by the bears but by another. It flew up, up, above their startled snouts. Now it stood ten yards above, and was still rising. Fifteen yards. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty.
So quickly that a blink of an eye could not encompass the velocity of that action. The other rock, flying towards Rama, seemed suspended in mid-air, frozen in time, so rapidly did this rock rise in contrast.
But it was not the rock alone that rose.
It was the one bearing it.
Hanuman.
Rama’s eyes widened in wonder and delight as he saw the vanar, grown to ten or fifteen times his size, and still growing. With each yard he grew, the rock he carried seemed to shrink in comparison. And with what speed! In a sliver of a fraction of a heartbeat, he was a third the size of Mahendra itself, and the enormous boulder, ten yards wide at the least, seemed now a mere ball that he carried in one hand. Upon the palm, gently balanced.
‘Rama.’
Reverentially, adoringly, devotionally. It was a chant, he realised now, a chant that seemed to be recited slowly because of the speed at which everything was taking place. It was Hanuman’s voice that chanted his name, but in a manner that could be heard only by him.
The other rock still hung in the air, for all this—Hanuman’s supernatural growth in stature and raising of the great boulder upon his palm—had taken place in the brief instant that it had taken the other falling rock to traverse those thirty or forty yards of distance from the end of the cliff to the place where Rama stood. It now loomed directly over Rama, casting a darker shadow on this gloomy deathcast day, and the bears fell in that shadow of the fist of Yama as well.
The rock fell upon Rama and the bears, neither a rakshasa nor any other species of mortal-hating asura; an indifferent foe, falling upon empty ground or living flesh and bone alike. It neither sought to kill nor to preserve, as fatalistic as nature itself upon this great land of Jambudwipa.
The giant Hanuman turned. He twisted at the waist, the first rock in the palm of his left hand. His other hand flashed out, as lightning flashes in a dark sky above an ocean. As a hummingbird’s wing flutters. Quicker than thought, he reached out and snatched the falling rock out of the air, grasping it easily, as a child catches a bladder-ball flung
by a playmate.
The shadow over Rama and the bears disappeared. At the far end of the beach, the rest of the debris tumbled and crashed and made a great deal of noise and raised a great amount of dust and sand. Some fragments rolled this way and that, within yards or even feet of their position. But none of it actually came close enough to harm them. Slowly, as things of nature eventually do, the debris of the fall settled, and the beach grew still.
The ocean seemed to lay still. The air still. The sky, pregnant with laden clouds, still.
Every one of the thousands upon thousands of souls watching on the beach, on the mountain, on the cliffs, still.
All still.
Like the heart in Rama’s breast.
Only Hanuman moved. Gigantic, forty yards tall or more, he turned and stepped across the beach, stepped carefully past the bears, as a father steps by his sleeping infant children. Only a heartbeat or two ago, they had been a head or two taller than he. Now, he towered above them all, and their snouts turned skywards to gaze upon him in admiration and awe.
Hanuman took a giant step on the beach, his enormous feet sinking into the sand to the depth of a man’s height. Then another step, as if assessing the stability of his newfound height and bulk. Then he strode on confidently, taking giant strides.
He stepped out into the sea, the water barely covering his hairy feet at first, then rising to his ankles. He stopped when he reached the end of the bridge. Leaning down, he placed one rock, then the other, at the far end of the bridge, adding a good twenty yards more to its length. He did this with careful ease, the way a child might do while building a pyramid of stone marbles.
Then he turned and gazed back, searching for something.
‘Rama.’
His eyes, big as dark lotus pools now, sought for and found Rama. The bears on the beach turned and looked at their mortal leader.
Hanuman came striding up the beach. In a few quick steps, he was back where he had begun. He fell to his knees, gouging great depressions in the sand, and joined his hands together. He bowed his head.
‘At your service, my lord,’ he said.
FOUR
The sun hung like a golden ball in an expanse of azure blue, like a jewel set in velvet. Not a whisper of a cloud was visible anywhere, nothing marred the picturesque perfection of the scene. Flocks of beautiful birds flew in perfect formations, wheeling and curving as if following preordained paths; even soldiers could rarely be trained to march in such perfect order. Yet Vibhisena knew that such perfection was itself unnatural.
Following the flight of a flock of herons, he scanned the lush, beautiful, rolling landscape that lay to the north and east of Lanka. So clear was the day, so crystalline pure the air, he thought he could almost make out the distant peak of Mount Nikumbhila. He even thought he could spy the familiar shape of the Shiva temple atop the mountain. But that was hardly possible: the peak was many yojanas distant. Then again, who knew what one might see from a tower of this height? The mainland even, mayhap? That stretch of beach before Mount Mahendra where the mortal prince Rama was said to have camped with his army of vanars? Surely that was too distant. And yet, he felt as if he had but to concentrate sufficiently, and even that impossible view would be granted to him. That was the power of the Pushpak’s magic: to render almost anything possible.
‘She is in here, brother, not out there.’
The voice was sibilant and susurrating. A serpent hissing at a male it hated intensely but with whom it was willing to mate in order to satiate its seething urge. That was ever Supanakha’s way, to invest her every word with sexual malice.
He ignored the tone and responded to the words. ‘He has altered the Pushpak’s height, do you see? The tower is now at least thrice as high as before. To what end has he done it, I wonder?’
She laughed mockingly. ‘Why wonder? It’s no secret. The matings have yielded good fruit. More bodies need more space. It’s a simple enough calculation.’
He turned to look at her. She crouched on the side of a tree trunk, her eyes serpentine, forked tongue flickering in and out of her slightly parted lips. The glistening, scaly skin merged unnaturally with her true furry coat to produce an odd, unsettling hybrid. Yet even the chaste, devoutly celibate Brahmin within him could not deny the obvious lure of her sexuality, avid and avaricious, burning like a pantheress in heat. ‘You speak of the couplings on the lower levels. What do they have to do with this? How many offspring could they be producing? Surely not enough to require such a threefold expansion?’
She snarled impatiently. ‘You know nothing, Vibhisena. I don’t know why he tolerates you sometimes. You’re such a pious fool. The matings are his greatest work, don’t you see that?
They are the means by which he has ensured that he will win the war, when the mortal arrives with his army.’
Vibhisena stared at her. ‘What help can all these little infants be to Ravana in the war? It’s only a few months since he began this entire programme of multiplication. At the normal speed of rakshasa gestation, at best he could have engineered the production of a few hundred—’
‘The normal speed of rakshasa gestation doesn’t apply. Remember Taraka.’
‘His experiments with genetic manipulation in the Bhayanakvan? The creation of hideous hybrid creatures? But he has no more asura species to work with now. Only rakshasas.’
‘It isn’t the variety he’s interested in. It’s the number. He’s been doing something to decrease gestation periods, to produce more babies faster, and to—’ She paused, a wary look coming into her eyes. ‘If you don’t already know all this, then perhaps he intended it that way.’
Vibhisena shrugged, trying to look uninterested. ‘He said something once, took me on a tour of his great ‘experiment’, the communes. Even tried to persuade me to join in. I wasn’t interested.’
She chuckled throatily, reassured. ‘You self-righteous oaf. What are you saving it for anyway? A mortal?’
Vibhisena bristled and tried to hide it. ‘How much faster can he make rakshasa babies grow up? It takes a normal rakshasa babe a full year to reach adulthood. How much could Ravana reduce that period? By a month perhaps? Two months?’
She smiled, licking something off the tips of her talons. ‘What if I told you that by feeding them a special diet, he can make them grow in weeks.’
‘Weeks?’ Vibhisena repeated, unable to process the information, let alone accept it. ‘Weeks? That’s impossible!’
‘Not for Ravana. Aided by the Pushpak’s power. Besides, brother, the results speak for themselves. When was the last time you visited the Nikumbhila caves?’
He frowned. ‘There is nothing there. Since Ravana’s return, the Pulastyas have moved back into the city. They occupy the finest houses and live like royalty. Many reside here within the tower itself. The caves are abandoned.’
‘Is that what you think?’ she asked slyly. ‘Then perhaps someday you should pay a visit.’ She turned smartly, showing him her rear, tail flicking provocatively. ‘Then again, you don’t need to go to Nikumbhila. The caves extend all the way to beneath this tower now. All you need do is go down to the sublevels. Way down.’
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’
She turned back, her eyes gleaming. ‘I am forbidden to visit the mortal. Ravana’s orders. In any case, I have no wish to see that hussy again. There are better things to do.’
And with a last flick of her tail, she was gone, leaving only a series of rake-marks on the trunk where she had clung.
Better things to do. All for Ravana, no doubt. The discussion the three of them had had that day had all come to naught. Ravana had won them all back with his eloquence and mind-manipulation. Even Mandodhari had been convinced of Ravana’s innocence and had believed the entire jaundiced version of events. As for Supanakha, her motives were always suspect. Even when she had pretended to be willing to act against her cousin, Vibhisena had known that it would take only a few words for her to go slinking back to Ravana.
She was like a loyal cat, snarling and hissing when she wanted to be left alone, but always around at mealtimes.
He made his way cautiously through the forest, the immaculately rendered artificial forest, towards the place where Supanakha had said the mortal woman lived. He noticed how careful everyone was to refer to the mortal woman as a visitor or a guest, never a prisoner. But he intended to see for himself just how comfortable this guest was in her new ‘home’.
He was still a good distance away when he heard the voices. Harsh, railing, nerve-grating, sanity-stealing rakshasi voices. Badgering, ranting, abusing, threatening, castigating, insulting …
His heart pounded as he slowed his pace, stealing through a kamatya grove as quietly as he was able. As he came closer, the voices grew louder, unbearably so, until he was transfixed by the sheer outpouring of hatred and venom that was being heaped upon the poor mortal. His ears burned at some of the names she was being called, at the vehemence with which they were spat out, the colourful epithets and revolting descriptions vomitted out.
Finally, he could take it no more. He stepped out from behind the trunk of an Ashoka tree, into an entire grove of Ashoka trees.
At first, none of them was even aware of his presence. They stood around her, four hulking beasts, spewing out their noxious streams of abuse. And not content with mere words, they poked and shoved and kicked dirt at her, slammed their fists into the tree trunk above her head, beside her ear, spewing spittle and slime over her tender skin. For her part, the poor wretch sat crouched in a foetal posture, her knees drawn tightly into her chest, hands clasped around her head, bent over into a human ball.
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 19