THREE
Vibhisena found Mandodhari in the old enclave. She had left her chariot and entourage at the corner of the avenue and gone ahead on foot. Charred refuse littered the roads, and the stench of burning was everywhere. He had to search through a score of narrow by-lanes before he found her in a small clearing, listening to a group of less fortunate citizens vent their woes. He saw her eyes find him and then look away, her mouth pursed disapprovingly, lips curled around her horn-teeth.
It took him several more moments to get her attention, and even when he did, she seemed to deliberately avoid him yet again. He knew then that her mind was already made up, and once that happened, virtually nothing he said would dissuade her. He had no choice but to try. There was too much at stake.
She was speaking to the angry citizenry about arming themselves and preparing for the coming conflict, when she turned her attention suddenly, unexpectedly to him. ‘And in case you still have doubts that the mortals will invade, then hear what Ravana’s own brother, Pundit Vibhisena has to say.’ She gave him his priestly title with an underscoring of scorn, making her antagonism unmistakable.
Suddenly, a hundred or more rakshasa heads turned to stare yellow-eyed and red-pupilled in his direction. Snouts sniffed the air, scenting him suspiciously. He took a step backwards, shocked at the wave of hostility he sensed.
‘Go ahead then, brother-in-law,’ Mandodhari declared, loudly enough for the entire neighbourhood to hear. ‘Tell our fellow Lankans what you have been telling me these past few days. Tell them why we should lay down our arms and bow before the mortal invader Rama when he comes, and recapitulate our crimes and transgressions against humanity. Tell them how we must grovel on our bellies and beg for his forgiveness.’
Snorts and chuffs of derision and anger sounded across the square. Vibhisena sought words that would calm the resentful crowd rather than inflame it further. ‘I do not say that we should beg or grovel before mortals,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Only that we should accept our mistakes and attempt not to make new ones.’
Someone from the crowd said with a gruff growl, ‘You spoke in favour of the vanar emissary too, did you not, Brahmin? It was your meddling that stopped his execution and transmuted his sentence … which left him free to wreak havoc upon our kingdom! Are you still so full of mortal-love even now that you do not see what destruction your blessed Rama has wrought upon our lands?’
A chorus of angry voices ayed the unknown speaker. Vibhisena tried to keep his voice calm as he sought a cogent reply. ‘The vanar only what he had to in order to defend himself. We were the original transgressors. He came here as a messenger of peace, offering terms. We chose instead to beat him, bind him, and then torture him. After that, we cannot fault him for having done what he did to redress the wrong.’
Cries and howls of protest greeted this attempt at mollification. ‘And what would you have us do now?’ shouted another voice, this one female. ‘Go run after him and kiss his scorched tail and beg his forgiveness?’
Angry laughs met that one.
Vibhisena looked around nervously. ‘Violence begets violence. We were the original transgressors when our lord Ravana abducted the wife of the mortal Rama. If we appeal to him to return her forthwith, we may yet prevent a terrible, tragic war. You have seen what havoc a single vanar emissary could accomplish. Imagine what an entire army led by Rama would do to Lanka.’
‘So now you’re speaking for the mortal, are you? It wasn’t enough that you stood up for the vanar, now you want to betray your own people for a mortal barbarian who invades our land through no fault of ours! How dare you!’
‘He is not a barbarian,’ Vibhisena protested. ‘He is only coming to retrieve his wife—’
Mandodhari’s voice cut him off curtly. ‘If Rama only wished to retrieve his wife, he could have had the vanar do that for him.’ She gestured at the destruction around her. ‘He seemed to have power enough to do as he pleased here, how hard could it have been for him to take the woman Sita back with him? But instead of doing that, he rampaged and nearly destroyed Lanka. I say that puts the lie to your words, Vibhisena. Neither the vanar nor his mortal master wants peace. They want war. And so we have no choice but to give them war. For Lanka will not stand by and be attacked twice by such treacherous outsiders. This time, when your mortal friends arrive at our shores, we shall be ready to repel them, shall we not, my people?’
‘AYE!’ rose the resounding cry.
Vibhisena shook his head in dismay. He tried to find something to say that would counter Mandodhari’s argument. But when he opened his mouth to speak, Mandodhari cut him off yet again.
‘I think you have said enough already, brother-in-law,’ she said. ‘I should not have listened to you yesterday when you came to speak to me on behalf of the woman and the vanar. Nor should the council have listened to you. We were fools, all of us, to be taken in by your pleas at the vanar’s helplessness, were we not?’ She gestured at the destruction around them. ‘Helpless enough to wreak havoc upon our beautiful city-kingdom, it would appear.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said, keenly aware of the angry eyes glaring at him from every side. The mob would like nothing better than to take the cost of their demolished homes and property from his own skin. And they were already past the point of anger. ‘We cannot blame the vanar for this.’
Mandodhari interrupted his next words. ‘And now he cannot fault us for doing what we must to defend ourselves against such future insidious attacks. Nor should you, Vibhisena, defend him or the other enemies of Lanka any longer. Why do you insist on taking the side of the mortals? Do you not feel for your own scorched people? Do you not care about the plight of rakshasas? Are only mortals and their vanar supporters in the right always? Are we nothing in your opinion?’ Her eyes flashed with anger and pain. ‘Have you forgotten that this same vanar emissary heinously murdered my younger son and your own nephew, Akshay Kumar?’
‘Mandodhari,’ he sighed, ‘I have not come here to argue with you.’
Someone in the crowd shouted, ‘Then why have you come, Brahmin?’
He appealed to his sister-in-law one more time.
‘If I could speak with you privately …’
‘Anything you have to say to me, say to Lanka as well,’ she said coldly. ‘I am a servant of my people. As are you, brother of Ravana. Or have you forgotten that?’
He gathered up his courage and attempted one last time to breathe reason into the smouldering bonfire. ‘Then hear me well, all of you. Queen Mandodhari asks me if I care for you all. Of course I care. I care for Lanka as nobody else does. My every waking moment is spent in prayer, invoking the blessings of the devas upon our land—’
‘Prayer! As if that ever solved anything!’ a rakshasa said scornfully.
‘My friends, fellow Lankans,’ he cried, ‘You must believe me. I speak with concern for your welfare. We must cease this futile conflict here and now. We must make peace with the mortal Rama and his forces at once.’
Someone yelled an obscene suggestion as to what Vibhisena ought to do with his mortal friends.
Mandodhari folded her arms across her chest as she watched Vibhisena’s discomfiture. A smile cut across her formidable features. ‘And why do you think we should do this?’
‘Because if a single vanar can wreak such havoc, imagine what an entire army can do. Imagine what Rama himself is capable of. Do you really wish to see Lanka destroyed? Not just the bricks-and-mortar city-kingdom that you so lovingly rebuilt from the ashes fourteen years ago, but the very land you call home. Would you want to see all our people massacred?’
She laughed at him in disbelief, her eyes flashing jewels of cold fury. ‘You are beyond belief, my brother-in-law. Do you truly believe this Rama and his army are capable of invading Lanka and wiping us out? And yet, you speak of him as if he were some paragon of dharma? How do you reconcile committing genocide with upholding dharma?’
‘What choice would he have? What choice are we gi
ving him? Unless we appeal to Ravana to return Sita devi at once and end this futile war before it begins.’
‘Sita devi?’ she repeated the words with open contempt. ‘You speak of her as if she were a goddess incarnate, not a mere trollop of a human.’
Vibhisena realised he might have gone too far in his enthusiasm. ‘Mandodhari, I know how much you love Lanka. Do you really wish to see it wiped off the face of the world? Please, I beg of you, come with me now to Ravana before it is too late. Let us appeal to him one more time. Perhaps now he will see reason.’
She looked at him scornfully. ‘Why do you need me at all? Why not go to him directly?’
He sighed. ‘Because he will not give me an audience any more. His doors are shut to me.’
She looked at him for a long, silent moment, her eyes glinting, reflecting the embers of some distant fire still smouldering on a hilltop behind him. Finally, when she spoke, her voice was as ice shaped to form a dagger. It drove into his consciousness without resistance. ‘Vibhisena, you are my husband’s brother. For that reason you have been forgiven many things. But treason and betrayal are beyond forgiveness. I advise you to leave my side and go back to your Brahminical rituals and prayers. You are wasting your time here arguing your case. I do not wish to hear another word you have to say. And I do not think anyone here can bear to listen to your insidious words a moment longer.’
‘Aye,’ growled one of the rakshasas who had spoken out earlier. ‘You but give the word, my queen, and we shall tear him apart limb from limb.’
‘Even Ravana’s brother has no right to utter such treason in Lanka,’ said another.
Several others voiced their assent loudly and shrilly. Some raised their snouts and roared their anger as well.
Vibhisena looked around. He could smell blood-rage now in the mob. If he tarried here any longer, they would not use words to attack him. It would be claws and jaws.
He turned and started back the way he had come. The crowd jostled and shoved him as he went, but grudgingly allowed him to pass. He knew this was because of Mandodhari’s presence. Were she to but give the word, he would be ripped to shreds in moments. Furious silence engulfed him as he made his way out of the square and back to where he had left his chariot. As he boarded it, he heard Mandodhari’s voice ring out, loud and clear across the packed square.
‘There is no place left for you in Lanka now, Vibhisena. Go now. Go to your beloved Rama. Go! Lanka has no need of you any longer.’
He boarded the chariot and rode away without looking back.
***
Ravana gestured and dispelled the image in the standing water. The sheet of fluid, suspended in mid- air by his sorcery, fell back into the earthen bowl from which it had been summoned to rise. The three dimensional image projected upon the particles of water vanished as well. Ravana turned to look at Supanakha, his faces beaming.
‘I think my wife has finally found her mettle, cousin. Did you see how she defended me in that debate? Like a lioness protecting her wounded mate!’
‘You brainwashed her well,’ she said slyly.
All but one of Ravana’s heads lost their smiles. Supanakha cowered and displayed an appropriately apologetic expression: Ravana had been sullen and withdrawn since returning from the long morning ‘session’ with Rama’s wife. She wished she had the water-curtain to see what had transpired between them. Whatever it was, it had not improved Ravana’s temper, already visibly provoked by the devastation left behind by the vanar.
He controlled himself with an effort and continued brusquely, ‘She has seen and heard all that transpired with her own senses, judged it herself, and come to her own conclusions. You call that brainwashing?’
She glanced up cautiously. ‘Persuaded, then. You talked her out of her suspicions very effectively. I thought she was angry enough to turn traitor on you after that debacle in the sabha hall.’
He snorted. ‘Mandodhari? Never. My brother dear, though— that’s another matter. What she said to him just now stung deep, you could see that from the look on his face. Because it is true. My brother was born wishing he was a mortal instead of a rakshasa. Sometimes I wish he would turn traitor on me.’
‘You wish?’ She leaped up on the edge of the large bowl, gripping it with her claws. ‘Why? So you could kill him?’
‘I can’t kill my own brother, Supanakha. Whatever he says or does, he is still my flesh and blood. It would be dishonourable.’ He seemed distracted, as his heads turned their attention to other matters. The conference was over, she observed silently. It was often like this with Ravana: all his heads would come together briefly to confer on some matter which was of greater importance than others, then some or most would go back to other preoccupations. ‘No. I wish he would realise himself more completely.’
She cocked her head, not sure whether to ask or wait for his meaning to become clearer. Waiting seemed wiser. He was never too patient when the heads were busy elsewhere.
He went on without noticing her lack of comprehension.
‘He believes that I am the villain of this whole piece, he has made that obvious from his actions in the tower when he went to see Rama’s wife, and from his confrontation with Mandodhari afterwards. I love the way she threw his own philosophical posturing back in his face. He always takes the high road but this time he’s about to learn that the high road is a lonely one that leads to only one place.’
When he didn’t continue for several moments, she prompted him cautiously. ‘And which place is that?’
He glanced at her as if recalling suddenly that he had been speaking to her and not simply airing his thoughts aloud. ‘Banishment.’
Before she could ask a question, he clapped his hands and sent a servant scurrying to fetch someone. Shortly afterwards, General Vajradanta arrived. Supanakha perked up a little. Vajradanta was a short, massively broad rakshasa who had one strikingly unique feature: his teeth were diamantine. As the result of a boon granted to his mother at his birth, he could bite through anything. She had once seen him accept a challenge to cut through a diamond. He had crunched the gem into bits, then chewed up the pieces like any other rakshasa might chew soft human marrow bones.
Ravana issued a series of terse instructions, then asked the general to repeat them. Vajradanta did so, grinning his trademark smile. His teeth flashed brilliantly, blindingly, against his greenish-white skin. He asked when Ravana wished the order to be carried out.
‘At once,’ Ravana replied tersely, already busy with other matters, his heads warring over some new issue, speaking a half-dozen different tongues at once, none of which Supanakha had ever heard spoken before, by rakshasa, human or animal.
She waited for a pause in the debate to ask carefully: ‘Is that part of your plan? Or are you just upset with him because he went and tried to turn Mandodhari against you again?’
‘He could no sooner turn Mandodhari against me than he could service a dozen kinkaras at once, cousin dearest. Everything you see unfolding before you, including Vibhisena’s foolish posturings, are all part of the greater game that began long ago. Back when the world was young and none of us was what we are today.’
She had no idea what he meant, but she had a feeling it would not be advisable to ask him to explain. She satisfied herself by pointing a paw at the urn of water. ‘Could I see?’
He sighed impatiently and gestured. The water flew up, hanging in mid-air like a sheer curtain. A flickering of colours ran through the mass, then particles of water rearranged themselves to form a solid-looking three-dimensional image. This picture was of Vibhisena, riding his chariot back to Lanka. He reached the main road leading into the city and saw General Vajradanta and the line of kinkaras blocking his way. Alighting from the chariot, he strode up to the general, who remained seated arrogantly on his broken-sur, leaving no doubt about who was in command here.
For some reason, Ravana had neglected to provide sound for this scene, unlike earlier when they had been able to hear every word that Ma
ndodhari and Vibhisena exchanged. Supanakha glanced around, but her cousin looked even more preoccupied, his heads engaged in some fierce unintelligible debate. She decided to watch and interpret the scene for herself. In any case, there was not much of a scene. Even as she watched, General Vajradanta spoke a few direct sentences to Vibhisena, who then reacted with visible shock. He tried to ask a question, or argue some point, upon which Vajradanta gestured to the kinkaras who strode forward in perfect formation, lowering their spears to attack position. Vibhisena, never a fighter, blanched and retreated hurriedly to his chariot. Vajradanta shouted something to him, the leer on his face suggesting that he was enjoying exercising such power over a member of the royal family, a Pulastya rakshasa no less. His fellow clan-rakshasas, the other kinkaras, cracked mirroring leers as Vibhisena turned his chariot around and rode back the way he had come.
The images on the water flickered and vanished. The water fell back into the urn. Supanakha was much closer this time, and had to leap back three yards to avoid being splashed. Had even a drop of the sacred ganga-jal touched her … She had no wish to even know what the effect might be of such sanctified Ganges water upon an asura like herself. She knew Ravana had deliberately tried to splash her for her impudence in demanding that he show her the encounter between Vibhisena and Vajradanta.
She did not mind. It was worth it to see Vibhisena sent into exile and yet another phase of Ravana’s grand game unfold. She had played no small part in that game. And her role would continue, their little skirmishes and disagreements notwithstanding. In fact, their make-up sessions were often worth the fights themselves. Vibhisena, on the other hand, was out of the picture completely. She smiled a catty smile, licking her fur, relishing the memory of the look on his face when Vajradanta had told him that he had been banished from Lanka for conspiring against the king, and must leave its shores at once, never to return, on pain of death. Banishment from his homeland, for seeking to save it. Serve the self-righteous fool right. Where had he thought he was anyway? Ayodhya? Hah!
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 48