‘I ask only that you treat her humanely. Even if she is a prisoner of war, she is no physical threat to us. Therefore, by the rules of war, she cannot be threatened physically either.’ He stopped, realising what he had just said and she had said a moment earlier. ‘All right. Even if she is not being physically threatened, surely there is such a thing as excessive roughness in questioning. I saw what she was undergoing. It was nothing less than abuse. You cannot abuse a prisoner who has shown us no violent threat at all.’
‘But I should abuse my husband? Is that what you are saying? I should distrust Ravana’s motives and challenge his every word? Call him a liar and a ravisher of other men’s wives, a kidnapper and a warmonger? Is that what you call adhering to my dharma?’
He stopped, startled by her sudden vehemence. ‘You must do what is right. You must follow your own conscience. You are an honourable woman, a pious and highly moral-minded rakshasi. But—’
‘But not a human,’ she said sadly.
He balked. ‘That is not what I was about to say.’
‘It is what you meant to say. I am all those wonderful, exalted things, but I can never be the ideal of perfection you aspire to, because I am not mortal. And she is. That hussy who sits in the tower and plays her little pretend game of Oh-look-at-me-howmiserable-I-am for gullible innocents like you, Vibhisena. That is what lies within your heart, does it not, dear brother-in-law?’
She looked away grimly, her profile hard and uncompromising even in the soft light of sundown. ‘I thought I understood how you felt. When Trijata came to me with her visions of hell and destruction, even my first thought was to blame my husband. Why? Because everyone regards Ravana as being responsible for everything. It is his own fault, actually. It is the persona he has built for himself. The truth is, he is only doing what any king would do, seeking the best for his people and his land. That often means taking harsh, even apparently cruel, steps. It is something that disturbed me much as a young bride. But there are things which must be done when you are the king of a great land, with so many enemies pressing down at all times. And Ravana is a great follower of dharma. Unlike your beloved mortal prince, Rama, who was banished from his own kingdom, by his own father no less! Ravana’s fight is against those enemies of our kind, and there are many of those. For every one Ravana, there are a thousand Ramas seeking to bring him down by any means, fair or foul. It has made him a strong and hard ruler, but a great one too.’
Vibhisena began to answer but just then a messenger arrived. Mandodhari heard what he had to say and turned to Vibhisena, a look of bright anger gleaming in her eyes. ‘It would seem you picked the wrong “victim” to champion, Vibhisena. Your allegedly docile little princess has gone and done something even you cannot condone, under the rules of war or the rules of dharma. She has attacked and killed one of my sakhis.’
Vibhisena stared, dumbfounded. ‘But … but that cannot be. How could—? It is impossible, my lady. She was defenceless, unarmed. And barely fit to stand or walk. How could she possibly—’
Mandodhari looked at him with a tight-lipped expression. ‘The how and why of it hardly matters now. She has done it. I will go to Ravana and tell him she must be penalised for this transgression. By taking another’s life, she has forfeited her own.’
She strode to the Pushpak waiting to take her back to the city. Vibhisena followed her, wringing his hands. ‘I cannot believe it. How could she have killed one of your fierce rakshasis when there were five of them together against her alone?’
‘Apparently, it was the foolish rakshasi’s own fault,’ Mandodhari said with a mixture of anger and sadness. ‘She told the others to go refresh themselves while she watched over the mortal. When they were alone together, she stupidly fetched food and drink and attempted to nourish the prisoner. Rama’s wife exploited the opportunity and attacked and killed the poor rakshasi before the others returned. I am told she slaughtered her in a most heartless manner.’
Vibhisena stared up at his sister-in-law as she climbed aboard the Pushpak. ‘Who was she? The rakshasi who was killed?’
Mandodhari tossed her head at him disdainfully. ‘My favourite sakhi, the old and faithful Trijata.’
Vibhisena gripped the golden rim of the vehicle. It was warm and pulsating to the touch, like a living being. He pulled his hand away at once. ‘My sister, I tell you, it must be your own sakhis who killed her and are pretending that the prisoner did it. It was I who requested Trijata to feed and succour Sita while the others were away. Sita had nothing to do with it.’
Mandodhari looked down at him. ‘Then you share a part in her death too, Vibhisena. How does that sit with your sense of dharma?’
He reared back as if struck with a whip. ‘My lady … ’
But she did not wait to hear the rest of his response. She commanded the Pushpak to take her away, and was gone in the wink of an eyelid, carried up and away by the celestial vehicle, flying at the wind’s pace, back to the city.
SIX
Hanuman’s great size diminished soon after. Any hope they might have had of the vanar retaining his giant size and putting it to use in their bridge-building effort were dashed. He remained as he was through Rama’s effusive showering of blessings and praise and gratitude, and through the deafening rounds of cheering and congratulations that were bestowed by all the workers on the beach and the mountainside. With Rama’s permission, Nala called a brief respite from the work to retrieve the bodies of those who had fallen trying to stop the rock on the cliff. Hanuman strode across the beach and picked up the broken, bleeding corpses in his hands, carrying them tenderly to the pyres that had been laid out on the dunes. He deposited them gently upon their final resting places, then knelt down in the sand, bowed his great head, and with palms closed, joined them all in the final prayers. When Rama opened his eyes at the end of the prayer, Hanuman had shrunk to his normal size again. Everyone else gazed with awe at the change, but Rama saw the abject disappointment on Nala’s face, and the chagrin that flared in Lakshman’s eyes.
‘I do not know how to make it happen again, Rama,’ Hanuman said afterwards, when the leaders sat in an unscheduled council called by Rama himself. The bears had overcome their dislike of bats long enough to agree to meet in the palm tree grove. The weather had changed again unexpectedly, the sky clearing so suddenly, it seemed impossible that only hours earlier a storm had seemed inevitable. The afternoon sun was so hot and searing now, the wind so still and energy-sapping, that the relatively cooler shade of the grove was as welcome as a benediction from stern gods. Lakshman relished the coconut water that had been handed out by Nala’s vanars to each of them and found himself scooping out and eating each morsel of the soft malai inside. The bears too were eating energetically, their eyes brighter than they had looked for days. The whole occurrence had infused them all with a great swell of hope. Now, if only that hope could translate into something more concrete.
‘How can you not know?’ Lakshman asked plaintively. ‘You have done it twice now. Surely you have some control over it?’
‘If he had, then he would gladly use it to aid us, brother Lakshman,’ Angad said patiently. ‘But we vanars think that this is a gift given to him by the devas, only to prevent the vanars coming to harm. That is why, on both occasions, the lives of vanars were threatened. We have a belief in our species that when the species is threatened, the devas empower one of us to save the rest. I fear that was all Hanuman’s power really was: a temporary gift by the devas to prevent the calamities. Once the danger was past, the power was removed.’
Jambavan made an odd sound, halfway between a snorting and a chuffing. Rama glanced sharply at the bear king. ‘My friend, you disagree with Angad’s assessment?’
Jambavan pulled his snout out of the coconut he was feeding from. Coconut water and malai dripped down the end of his snout. He swatted it off carelessly with the back of one furry paw. ‘Smells like rotten fish to a bear.’
Angad frowned. ‘Are you insulting our legends,
sire?’
‘I am respecting them, sire!’ the bear king said with unexpected vehemence. ‘You, on the other hand, are clearly unaware of your own legends. Do you know the tale of Elahrairah? Or the many adventures of Shardik? Or any of a thousand other great adventures and exploits?’
Angad struggled to restrain his temper. The young prince had learned a great deal since Rama had first encountered him at Kiskindha, much of it, he claimed, from Rama himself. He glanced at Rama now, then said in a strangled voice, ‘Are those names of vanars? If they are then I have never heard them spoken before.’
Jambavan crunched into the side of the coconut, chewed noisily for a moment, then abruptly discarded the rest of the shell, narrowly missing a couple of bears’ heads as it went flying over. Ears twitched furiously for a moment, then he swallowed, grunted, and said, ‘Hanumat, then. Have you heard that name before? Or Maruti? What of Anjaneya? Have you heard those vanar names in your legends or were you sleeping too soundly when granny vanar was telling her bedtime tales?’
Angad looked offended. ‘My lord rksaa, are you seeking to insult me deliberately?’
Jambavan waved a thick paw. ‘Oh, don’t fuss. Don’t fuss. It’s all fish and bone, anyhow.’
He snorted, choked, spat out something—it appeared to be a cone-shaped piece of coconut shell—and grunted with relief. ‘Much better, much better on the bellywork. Now, come to the edge of the pond if you want to drink deeply. You should be ashamed of yourself, not knowing your own ur-history, son.’ He waved deprecatingly to shoo off an apoplectic answer from Angad. ‘Oh, don’t get your fishbones in your honey, boy. I was busy helping participate in most of those legends back when you were hardly even a speck in your ancestor’s seed.’
Rama glanced over at Angad and caught his eye. He lowered his lashes, conveying a message to the young vanar. Angad got the message and subsided.
‘Harr,’ Jambavan belched. ‘The mortal has more wisdom than ten of us combined. That’s why his legend will survive long after our names are long forgotten or just labels on items of curiosity on a dusty museum shelf someplace. Anyhow. Anyhow.’ He slapped his enormous rotund belly, the fur prickling as he rubbed it hard. ‘It’s time you knew the worth of your own man.’ He gestured to Hanuman. ‘Come here, son. Come sit by your old ancestor.’ He grinned, adding gruffly: ‘So old, I hardly remember how I begat the vanar and mortal races, let alone this one solitary vanar!’
Lakshman rolled his eyes at Rama as if to ask what they were doing listening to all this ballyhoo when there were more important things to discuss and far more important work to be accomplished. Rama nodded once, firmly, and Lakshman sighed and shook his head sadly. But despite the puzzlement on everyone else’s faces, Rama had a feeling that the old bear was about to surprise and shock them all soon. Even though the vanars had an inkling about Hanuman’s origins, Jambavan was clearly possessed of greater knowledge than they possessed.
Hanuman came and crouched on the ground beside Jambavan. The bear laid a hand on the vanar’s shoulders, slapping him hard on the back. ‘I blame you not at all for forgetting. The forgetting itself was a curse laid down upon you all. For sometimes, when greatness arises in too proud a form, it needs gentling. The most common flaw among giants is a lack of humility. And so when Hanuman here was very young, his father decreed that nobody should know his true ability, least of all Hanuman himself. And a decree from a deva is a writ of law.’
Angad shook his head in frank confusion. ‘I don’t understand, Bear Lord. I grew up with Hanuman in the wilds of Kiskindha, we played together on the slopes of Mount Rishimukha and roamed the redmist ranges together. He was no giant then. As for his father, he was a fine vanar, but no deva, as you say. Kesari was a great designer of gardens and his work graces the royal grounds of Kiskindha even today, but he was—’
‘Harr. Kesari was his father, in the sense that he raised this boy and was a father to him. But Hanuman was not begat by Kesari.’
‘He was not?’ Angad looked around at the other vanars, who returned his look eagerly, obviously keen to know the full story.
‘No, young Prince Angad,’ Jambavan said. ‘He was not begat by a vanar at all! He was begat by a deva. This young fellow here, this fine specimen of greatness-in-the-making, is the son of Marut, the lord of wind, also known as Vayu deva.’
There was silence all around. Even the vanars beyond the grove, conveying the essence of the talk in the grove to the rest of the armies—Rama had not forbidden listening to the council’s talk today, perhaps because he had sensed that all should hear whatever was said on this occasion—fell silent. Only the wind shirring in the fronds of the palms overhead and the ocean continued their eternal dialogue. Hanuman, crouched on his haunches beside Jambavan, looked up at the bear king with an innocent openness that reminded Rama of any young Ayodhyan scholar at a forest gurukul. Undemanding, unquestioning, completely open to anything the guru had to say. For to the truly enlightened seeker of knowledge, there were no real surprises or new things to be learned, only knowledge that one did not know one possessed. And while Hanuman’s fellow vanars knew something of his past, it was clear that none knew as much as Jambavan was about to unfold. They all listened with great eagerness as the bear king told the tale in his inimitable fashion.
‘Punjikasthala was the best of apsaras, the celestial dancers that graced the court of Indra, lord of the devas. But owing to a curse, she was compelled to be reborn as the daughter of Kunjara, the then king of vanars. Her given name in this rebirth was Anjana. And it was with that name and in that vanar form that she married the vanar Kesari, the king’s master of gardens. Now, you may wonder why she did so, being a daughter of the most powerful vanar and able to obtain a prince as her husband if she pleased, or a dozen princes even. For as with mortals, vanar women choose their mates, at least in this age they do so still. And Anjana, after all, was an apsara reborn. Even in her vanar form, she was a portrait of feminine perfection. Graced with exquisitely formed limbs and features that would rouse Indra himself. But despite all this, she still craved to return to her apsara form, for it is ever the lot of living creatures to believe that they were happier yesterday past and miserable today, even though that assumption is proved wrong when they move forward a day and see that they are still unhappy today but felt happier yesterday.
‘And so, night and day, Anjana prayed to be returned to her former place in the court of the king of devas. Which of course, could not be done, because the curse required that she live out this entire lifetime in the form of a vanar. To ease her aching soul, Indra, her former master, found a loophole in the curse.’
Jambavan paused. ‘Do you notice that in such tales, someone or other is always cursed by a holy sage, and the person cursed always prays to one deva or other, and the deva always seems to find some way to subvert or otherwise obfuscate the curse?’ The bear shook his head, spittle spraying to either side. ‘Brrr.’ He went on. ‘Anyhow, Lord Indra heard her pleas and granted her wish, but only for one night. Anjana was given the power to transform back into her apsara form for one moonless night, provided that she did not show herself in that form to any living being. So, she proceeded to the top of a mountain.’
Jambavan looked down at the upraised eyes of the silently listening Hanuman, even though the vanar had not spoken a word. ‘Yes, my lad, you would not be amiss to think that mountain to be Rishimukha. For it was there that your mother had suffered the curse, and it was there that she repaired to muse on her fate. And it was as a beautiful apsara, beyond the ability of any male to resist, that she wandered the lonely slopes of Rishimukha all that night. It being pitch dark, she was seen by none, and her night would have passed safely, and in the morning she would have returned to her vanar form and gone back to her husband’s embrace and resumed her life in Kiskindha. But then you would not have been born and we would not be sitting here today, would we? Nay. Something did happen that night, and again, it was an event that seems to occur in most such tales of deva
s and devis.
‘One person did lay eyes on Anjana in her form as Punjikasthala that night. For though it was dark and moonless, and not a creature stirred on the slopes of Rishimukha, yet, the wind still blew. And in every breath of wind that wafts across the world is part of the essence of the wind lord, Vayu. Or Marut, as you prefer.
‘The instant he gazed upon her perfect form, Vayu was smitten. Her slender waist, well-shaped thighs, her tapering form, her exquisite face … he danced around her, seeing her beauty in all its heavenly perfection even on that pitch-dark mountain, and he could not resist the overpowering desire he felt for her. Taking his corporeal form, Vayu stepped onto the mountain and without more ado, embraced the beautiful apsara. In the darkness, absorbed in her self-pity and misery, she cried out, affrighted.
‘‘Who dares to lay hands upon a chaste woman? Do you not know that I am already married? How dare you seek to break my vow of fidelity to my husband?’’ So saying, she struggled furiously to break his embrace, for she was a strong-willed woman willing to fight to defend her honour.
‘The wind god gave her sight to gaze upon his form in the darkness. “Do not fear me, beautiful one,” he said gently but with passionate intent. “I am the lord of wind, Vayu. I do not seek to ravish you without your acquiescence, but your beauty has overwhelmed my senses. I must possess you tonight, or I will wander ever upon this mountain and be unable to leave its gentle flower-strewn slopes, languishing from unfulfilled desire. I urge you, give yourself to my embrace and I shall show you pleasure such as you have never known before nor shall know hereafter.”
‘Now, many women, mortal or vanar, would have yielded to such an urging. For to accept a deva’s coital embrace was to be divinely blessed. But Anjana was a woman of great pride and honour and could not bear the thought of enjoying such pleasure at the cost of her husband Kesari’s reputation.
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 21