‘Except one thing,’ Lakshman said tersely.
And indicated the Pushpak overhead, with Sita’s tiny, forlorn face visible even at this distance.
***
Sita had spent a wan and nerve-racking night, alleviated only by the sight of her beloved Rama and her brother-in-law Lakshman. Each time her champion—for she knew he fought for her as much as for Rama, his people and the cause—defeated another Lankan challenger, her heart leaped. Perhaps, she prayed, Ravana would see that Rama could not be vanquished, just as his champion could not be, and would yield now. She knew this would not come to pass, but she still prayed. The sight of so much blood being spilled, even Lankan blood, even that of warriors, dismayed her. Perhaps it was the life growing within her—the lives, she corrected herself at once—or merely her weariness with so much war and violence. Either way, she wished now only to have done with all this, to have an end to this fighting. To go home.
When the ruckus broke out in the city, she understood at once what it meant.
From her vantage point, she could see the crowds running helter-skelter. They were heading for the tunnels, the subterranean network of corridors riddling the island that had either been created on the night of the sorcerous changes or merely altered and expanded, she did not know which. From the commotion at the mouth of one of the tunnels visible from her position, it seemed that there was fighting going on there. Since Lanka had only one enemy, she knew that it could only be Rama’s forces that had somehow infiltrated the tunnels and breached the city! Then victory was in sight at last!
She laughed, the first open-throated, guileless laugh she had enjoyed since … since that afternoon at Panchvati when she had chased after the golden deer and slipped and coloured herself with turmeric and Rama had found her that way, rolling in the grass, yellow-faced like a bride-to-be.
The slap took her by surprise. A backhanded blow upon her left cheek so resounding that it nearly caused her to lose her balance. She clutched at the railing, her head spinning, eyes unable to focus for a moment. She blinked away tears and stared into the snarling, fur-covered features and glowering yellow eyes of Supanakha.
‘What do you have to laugh about now, Rama’s—?’
Whatever the rakshasi had been about to say next was cut off by a kick from Ravana’s mighty foot. The shape-shifter was thrown clear across the width of the Pushpak, a good ten yards or more, to land with a loud thump on the far railing and wall. She squealed with indignation and leaped towards her cousin, coming at him with the ferocious instinct of a cat rather than the lumbering power of a rakshasa. Perhaps that was what saved her life, for Ravana struck out at her with a careless blow, as if swatting aside a gnat rather than dealing with an enemy of any import, and her natural feline response brought her down on all four paws. She snarled and crouched in preparation for yet another leap.
‘Enough!’ thundered the rakshasa king. ‘You’ve already given me reason to kill you, cousin. If you wish me to perform the execution right here and now, then it shall be so.’
Supanakha subsided, but not without a final glowering snarl. She licked at her haunches where they had struck the railing of the Pushpak. Sita saw a red bruise rising there already as well as another dark welt where Ravana’s careless blow had landed. She felt sadness rather than satisfaction at seeing her abuser hurt thus; would this cycle of violence never end?
‘How are you, my lady?’ asked Ravana in a tone so gentle, it almost made her forget who he was. But she had seen enough of his guile not to be fooled.
She ignored him studiously, staring out at the lightening sky. From below, she heard the sounds of the Lankan army moving once more, and knew that battle was about to be joined. She had expected that the instant she had seen the commotion in the city and recognised it for what it was. Bravo, Rama. You forced their hand and compelled them to confront you at last in a fair fight. Now we shall see how the lord of Lanka fares in a true battle.
Ravana paused, gazing down at her with all his heads in a manner that almost made her glance up. She resisted but was struck by the feeling, so overwhelming it must have some measure of truth, that he somehow knew her thoughts and was displeased by them in the extreme. Still she refused to look up at him and give him the satisfaction of a single word of conversation. As far as she was concerned he did not exist. It was the only way she could resist him now, for every gesture, every look, every word she granted would be twisted and misinterpreted to suit his own purpose. Only by acting as if he did not exist could she reject his advances totally.
After a moment of waiting, looming above her like an elephant with a raised foot, he turned and strode away, back to the front railing of the Pushpak, where he stood once more, gazing out at the battlefield below while his heads continued their own bizarre battle of words and wits.
She stole a glance at Supanakha. The rakshasi sensed her gaze and glared back at her, but continued licking her wounds with no sign of aggression or threat. However much she might hate Sita, she hated Ravana more, and feared him too, and that was the only protection Sita could cling to for now.
She raised herself to her feet once more and took her place at the railing, determined to watch the battle to the finish, or for as long as her captor would permit her. She would pray for Rama’s victory with her every breath now, until the war ended.
EIGHT
In the clear light of day they met this time, vanars and rakshasas, and bears, and two mortals, on the open field of battle, with no subterfuge, or sorcery, shima or tactics, strategy or device. A straightforward charge, army versus army, riding and racing headlong towards one another, meeting midway, clashing together with a noise so terrible that all the world seemed to stop still for a moment. Prithvi herself paused in her rotation around her own axis, as well as her revolution around the sun god’s blinding orb, to wonder at the clash of two hosts so hellbent on one another’s destruction.
Many wars have been fought since, and many were fought before.
But none akin to the war of Lanka.
Never before or since have such strange hosts, through a chain of such extraordinary circumstances, gathered on so seemingly idyllic a plain, marred only by the smoke-oozing cone of the newly reawakened volcano a few yojanas farther south. Never before had vanars gone to war in such numbers—and that too against rakshasas! Never before had rakshasas been confronted by an army on their own homeland. Never before had a war been fought for dharma by such misunderstood, maligned and mistreated ones as Rama, Lakshman and Sita— for in her own proud way, she fought as valiantly as any other. Not every soldier wields a blade; not every battle is fought with violence; not all blood that is shed is visible.
In the clear light of day, they clashed.
***
Like moths to the flame, rakshasas rushed towards Hanuman. Many of them were the same glazed-eyed observers that Rama had seen watching the vanar through the long night of combat, their aggression giving way to disbelief, then to fury, then to denial, then, finally, reluctantly, to awe and admiration. Many charged him without even swinging their blades or maces, merely rushing at him and allowing themselves to be mowed down, as if being killed by Hanuman was a consummation devoutly to be desired.
Those who attacked him did so with the silent, watchful stance of a deer lashing at a tiger, purely out of reflex and instinct, yet knowing full well that the tiger would win and they fall. And so they fell. And falling spoke his name or mouthed it silently or simply held his image in their glazed eyes as they died. They had been killed by Hanuman.
Rama and Lakshman were out of arrows, and had to fight with their swords. Of course, Rama possessed one last arrow, and that one alone was equivalent to all the arrows ever created since the beginning of time and until the end of days, but in staging this battle with apparent honesty and transparency, Ravana had brilliantly denied him the use of that celestial weapon. If Rama employed the Bow of Vishnu and the Arrow of Shiva now, he would be seen as resorting to unfair means, and confirm
ed as the treacherous invading sorcerer the Lankans believed him to be. He would not use it until and unless it was imperative to do so.
So he chose to fight like a mortal, like a Kshatriya, like an Ayodhyan, like an Arya warrior, like a yodha. Like a man. And he did not stand apart from his army as Ravana did either; he waded into the thick of the combat, his sword flashing beside Lakshman’s, both of them dispatching rakshasas by tens and dozens with the methodical ferocity they had acquired over years—nay, decades—of fighting rakshasas. And as the battle progressed and the sun traversed the Lankan sky and the day grew long, the rakshasas of Lanka saw Rama and Lakshman fight and came to know them for the warriors they truly were. Came to know and fear them. Not because of the sorcery they thought they wielded, or the treachery which they believed was a part and parcel of mortal nature, but for their fighting skill and battlefield courage and sheer endurance, for these were all things that rakshasas understood well and admired greatly. Their awe and admiration for the two mortal yodhas grew steadily as the day wore on, and by the evening of that third day of the war in Lanka, word had spread across the blood-soaked field that Rama and his brother were truly great warriors, worthy of confronting and killing—or being killed by. For to a rakshasa, nothing was more honourable than being killed by a warrior of such stature and courage. In war, one could die of anything—a cut from a rusty weapon, an accidental nick by one’s own comrade in the heat of battle, a pratfall, a clumsy move inefficiently parried, a convergence of serendipity and bad luck. But to be bested by a foe who was the greatest mortal warrior that ever lived—and this was the legend that grew around Rama on that third day of the war—was a death any rakshasa would willingly embrace.
But of course, they would fight bitterly for the privilege, not simply throw themselves down on his sword. These were not the glassy-eyed admirers of Hanuman who were so awe, struck by the vanar’s incredible power that they flocked like lemmings to his ocean. The rakshasas who thronged to Rama and Lakshman were the finest warriors on the Lankan field, the best of the best of their nation, seeking to pit their own skills against the best of the best of the mortal nations. A rakshasa was born, raised, lived and loved and trained with the omnipresent dream that some day he or she would face the hated mortals of Arya and do battle with them, helping rid the world of those terror-mongers who had plagued their kind for aeons. Once, their ancestors had battled mortals frequently. But most of the rakshasas in Lanka now had never seen a mortal before, let alone waged war against one. And so, Rama and Lakshman were prized on that field, and every rakshasa worth their salt— and their nasal effusions—sought to fight them. And by the end of that day, judging by the piles upon piles of corpses around the two brothers, it almost seemed as if every rakshasa did fight them. The death count numbered in the scores.
And still they kept coming. And fighting. And dying.
***
The others fought bravely as well. King Sugreeva waved his tree and the horde parted to provide a bloody pathway down which he leaped and fought and slew the enemy. His son fought beside him and was amazed at first at his father’s prowess, for this was the first truly great war he had ever seen his father fight. Angad matured and grew wiser in the course of that day, for every son listens to the tales of his father’s great deeds with only one ear open and a sceptical mind, thinking always, ‘Really? I’m sure I could do ten times better!’ But it was only now, when he was pitted against the same odds on the same field, that he understood for the first time how great a warrior his father truly was. More importantly, he understood how great a king Sugreeva was. For the vanar lord could easily have stayed at a distance, and watched and supervised the fighting from afar. But by pitting his own life on the field, and staying from dawn to dusk and dawn to dusk yet again, and a third time, he proved himself to be more than just a king, he proved himself a comrade. The most valiant comrade at all. For though he was not the oldest on that field, he was certainly the only oldun with such authority and lineage, and his very presence, not to mention his prowess, was hugely inspiring to his army. He knew this, and fought the more valiantly for it, and his warriors fought the more valiantly for his sake, and died the more bitterly.
As Sugreeva earned his son’s respect and admiration, so did each one of the heroes of Rama’s army find their own place in the sun that fateful third day of the war. Not all survived it. Sometimes, as happens with war, the most unlikely ones fell, never to rise again, while the least expected ones survived, if not to fight another day, at least to look back on that day and speak of it to others for years afterwards. So it was that Mainda, the older, cynical champion of the Mandaras, outlived the battle, and Dvivida, the younger and more energetic, died, taking a spike from one rakshasa in his left armpit, and, in quick succession, six separate vital wounds from six other rakshasas, impaling him like a bug on a bramble bush. It made Mainda angrier than usual, and he killed all seven rakshasas in quick succession before going on to kill several sevens more. Mandaradevi would have been proud of them both.
Nala, the bridge-builder, fought like a bridge-destroyer. His natural ingenuity and keen visual acuity served him well, and he battled with a fervour that was as much intellectual as physical, using his talent for perspective and judgement of angles to leap and slash and cut and dodge, often killing his victims by tricking attackers to turn and thrust and kill their own comrades accidentally, while he leaped cheekaing out of the way. If there was a trophy for the fighter who killed the most enemies without actually resorting to violence himself, he would surely have won it.
Speaking of cheekas, Sakra died on the field as valiantly as any warrior, although he killed not a single rakshasa. The young vanar was taking a message from one general to another— Satabali to Susena—asking for reinforcements on the extreme left flank and was killed by an axe-like bladed weapon flung by a frightened rakshasa at a cluster of bears who were taking a heavy toll on their enemy. Even as he died, he managed to pass on his message to a fellow angadiya, who scampered away to deliver it as Sakra breathed his last rattling breath. His brother would learn of his passing only a day later.
They all fought bravely and fiercely, vanars and rakshasas and bears and mortals. In the clear light of day, and as the day waned and night came again, by the honest darkness of night.
But some were more gifted than others.
***
From the very outset of the battle, Indrajit was a menace of sizeable proportions. Although a gifted sorcerer, he had clearly been ordered by his father not to employ magicks and asura maya on the battlefield. In any case, he did not need to. For Indrajit, like his father, was possessed of abilities granted to him by the devas themselves, whom he had helped conquer once, and who served him even now, however reluctantly, as the ransom price they paid for their freedom and for he and Ravana keeping their hordes away from the heavenly realms.
Every arrow he put to his bow and loosed was accompanied by a great onrush of wind and stormy rain and even thunder and lightning at times. The missile then loosed killed not one but a score of enemies. It was fortunate that he fought languidly, almost carelessly, as if aware that if he desired, he alone could decimate Rama’s army, or the losses he piled up would have been tenfold or even hundredfold. As it was, his only goal seemed to be to face Rama, and so he only killed those who came in his way—be they rakshasas or vanars or bears, for Indrajit was of that breed of kings’ sons who looked down on all those of lower status than himself as being much alike. He ran over rakshasas fighting bravely for his own cause with the same careless impunity he displayed when killing a score of vanars or bears.
The hordes seeking out Rama and literally dying to face and fight the legendary mortal yodha hampered and impeded Indrajit for all of that day. There was also the small matter of his not wishing to slaughter several tens of thousands of his own forces in order to reach the enemy leader. Not that he cared a whit about killing that many of his own warriors; simply that it was not expedient to do so, and though he migh
t be a psychopathic monster, he was not a foolish psychopathic monster and knew that a supreme commander, even a supreme acting commander did not massacre his own army.
So after several unsuccessful attempts to make his way across the field to Rama’s position, he finally saw that it would take the slaughter of a quarter of his own army to reach that position. At which point he settled for killing Rama’s armies instead— which he did with dispassionate brutality, snuffing out the lives of scores of vanars and bears—and the occasional handful of rakshasas who were entangled in combat with them—with his potent arrows, driven with the force of the gods of wind, storm, lightning, water, fire, air, and a score of others.
But as the day gave way to night, and the night wore on relentlessly, with no signs of the fighting abating, he grew impatient. And finally, as the armies fell back and rallied and charged again and then shifted again in one of those periodic adjustments that armies must make during battle, his opportunity arrived. A gap opened up between himself and Rama’s position. And due to the falling back of the rakshasa hordes as well as a simultaneous movement of Rama’s forces to the flanks and outwards, there was a clear pathway all the way.
Indrajit whipped up his team and rode his chariot with demonic fury straight at Rama.
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 82