Still, she could not let herself believe that Rama was dead. She simply could not. Not until—
‘Prove it to me,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice from revealing the turmoil of her heart. ‘Prove to me that Rama is … that he is no longer alive. Let me go to him and place my hands upon his body and see for myself.’
Ravana turned back at the sound of her voice and contemplated her with the same morose range of expressions. The Pushpak continued to fly in the direction he had guided it, the wind of their progress gently ruffling the hair on several of his heads, except, of course, the two hairless ones.
Finally he said softly, his words sounding so sincere that she had to remind herself of his deviousness. ‘I understand your need for closure. It is only right that a widow should have the opportunity to grieve over her husband’s body one last time. Rama was a great warrior and deserves that much at least. However, I cannot permit you to go to him under these circumstances.’
There, she thought triumphantly, I have caught him out. He cannot let me examine Rama’s body closely because he knows that I would then be able to see for myself that his ‘death’ is no more than an illusion! I was right to distrust him.
But even as this argument raced through her mind, Ravana added in the same subdued tone: ‘What I can do instead is bring his corpse to you. I will arrange to have it brought within the day in order that you may grieve properly and accept the truth of his demise.’
And he turned away, leaving her dumbstruck, for even the strenuously objecting part of her mind could find no suitable retort to this simple statement of intent.
TEN
It was nearing noonday when Angad heard the sparrow. The only reason he noticed it at all was because the sound of its chirping was so unusual under the circumstances. Being a vanar, he was attuned to the natural rhythm of nature, and had observed the exodus of the birds when Ravana’s sorcerous fog enveloped the island-kingdom. Since then he had not heard a single bird sound. Even that might not have been unusual in itself, except that the sound was coming not from a tree or a grove—there were none within miles of this plain—but from the ground.
He looked up from the place where he was sitting, squatting really, along with lakhs of other vanars and bears, near Rama and Lakshman’s grotesquely snake-covered bodies. They had sat thus since the midnight hour when Indrajit’s arrows had struck. After Hanuman’s abrupt departure, the war council had conferred for long hours without finding any satisfactory solution. Finally, when they were approaching their wits’ end and starting to surrender to despair, a missive had come from Jambavan who still held the inner city. The bear king said that he had elected to stay in position as it would be foolish to lose such a hard-won strategic advantage; besides which, it had been Rama himself who had ordered him to use the cave route to enter the city and hold it at all costs until the rest of the army breached the gates and entered as well and it would be fish-foolish to disobey that order now simply because Rama was not there to enforce it. Nobody argued with this expectedly eccentric mixture of bear logic and phrasing. But it was the latter part of Jambavan’s message that puzzled them. Wait till sundown, said the bear king through the angadiya courier. If Rama is not revived by then, let us go ahead and complete the invasion of Lanka and honour his last wishes by fulfilling his dharma and rescuing Sita.
King Sugreeva had been arguing until then for an immediate resumption of hostilities. On hearing the bear king’s message, he grew contemplative and conceded that waiting a day would not harm their cause much. Or if it would harm it, then so could acting at once. As the acting leader of their forces alongwith Jambavan, he concluded that they would indeed wait until the next sundown and if Rama and Lakshman were not revived by that hour, they would proceed with the war.
After that, it had been waiting, waiting, and nothing but waiting.
The mood on the battlefield was one of grieving and heartbreak. Crowds of vanars and bears lined up and formed a procession to come forward in turn, view the snake-infested bodies, and then move on to allow others to take their turn. There was no formal grieving, as it had still not been confirmed that the Ayodhyans were truly dead, and Sugreeva would not have a single one speaking of them or acting as if they were so. So there was no outright weeping and beating of breasts and pulling out of hair, or cutting one’s own bodies with claws and sharp blades as some of the tribes were wont to do at the funeral of a great vanar. Only a solemn queue, as each and every warrior, fit and wounded alike, came to see their fallen leader and offer a brief prayer.
As the sun rose and traversed the Lankan sky, the silence on the battlefield had grown thicker and denser, filling Angad’s ears and brain until he thought he would scream with frustration. He could not bear to sit around here a moment longer, and yet he must. Hour after hour passed thus, and he began to admire the resolve and discipline of the Arya rishis who could spend years in meditation and spiritual contemplation. He occupied himself with great difficulty by thinking of Kiskindha and of his wife and the new life she was about to bear—or had borne already in his absence, for she had been close to her time, which was the only reason why she had not accompanied him on this campaign. He decided that if it were a boy, they would name him Rama, and if a girl, Sita. Thus, with thoughts of home and family uppermost, he passed the several hours of waiting.
When the sun was approaching its zenith, he was slowly distracted from his reverie by the sound of a sparrow chirping. The very unexpectedness of the sound brought him out of his contemplation. He looked around, seeking its source. To his surprise, it was distinctly coming from the ground. He rose and walked around, seeking it out. Only yards away from where the brothers lay in their terrible living shroud, the ground was churned and ploughed up where a Lankan chariot had crashed and overturned. At the place where the corner of the chariot’s cupola had dug a furrow in the ground, he found the broken shell of a tiny egg and the faint tracks of a little fledgling. A few feet away, beside the chariot’s shattered wheel, he spied the tiny bird.
He knelt down gently, and moving with exaggerated caution, scooped up the little newborn. It twittered and chirruped indignantly at first, its minuscule claws pricking his palms lightly, then subsided into a tiny ball of feathery warmth and lay there quietly.
‘Hello, little one,’ he whispered softly, still wistful from the hours spent thinking of his own impending fatherhood, and the new life he would be caring for on his return to Kiskindha. ‘This is no place for you.’
He looked around. The endless lines were still moving past the mound for all those who had seen Rama and Lakshman once would queue up immediately to see them again in the wan hope that their situation might somehow have been resolved. The only change that anyone could see was that the snakes seemed to grow more agitated when the sunlight began falling directly upon them, writhing and moving in frenetic patterns that were sickening to watch, and once the sun had risen higher and grown stronger, they had subsided by degrees, until now, a half hour-watch ago when Angad had last checked, they were almost as still as if dead themselves. He had actually reached close enough to touch the body of one particularly thick green snake—the exact shade of a neem leaf—and only when it tightened its coiled grip was he satisfied that the wretched things were still alive.
Everyone assumed that the snakes were susceptible to the heat of the harsh sunlight and as snakes were wont to do, had grown sluggish and overheated by the constant exposure. Since snakes, being cold-blooded creatures, were also wont to die from prolonged exposure to direct sunlight, it was decided that everyone would ensure that no shade fell on the two bodies in the faint, unconvincing hope that the snakes would wither in the heat and leave the body to go in search of cooling shade. Thus far that had not happened, and Angad secretly did not think that these sorcerous snakes shot like arrows from a bow would be affected by the sun as normal snakes were.
‘But you would like the sun, wouldn’t you, my little beauty?’ he said softly to the fledgling in his
palm, stroking its back with a finger. He carried it out of the shadow of the fallen chariot and into the sunlight.
The result was electrifying.
He stared in surprise as the little baby bird opened its wings and chirruped loudly. Loudly enough to attract the attention of all around. They looked up, staring in dazed puzzlement, their faces reflecting the stunned awareness of their loss, still unable to accept its reality. Angad stared down at the palm of his hand as the little sparrow grew visibly, expanding in size much the way that he had seen Hanuman do, but only to the extent that it became a full-grown sparrow. Even so, it was an astonishing transformation, accomplished almost in moments instead of the days it ought to have taken. And it had been precipitated simply by exposure to the sun. He could almost feel the warmth of Surya-deva enter the little body and fill it with energy. He recalled something Hanuman had told them on the journey, the tale of Rama’s exploits in the dreaded Southwoods forest called Bhayanak-van, which Hanuman in turn had heard repeated by Rama’s band of outlaw rebels in the wilderness of Janasthana during his years warring against the rakshasas there.
What was it Hanuman had said? In the Bhayanak-van war against Tataka and her hybrids, the brahmarishi Vishwamitra had timed the confrontation to take place at noon when the sun was at its highest and strongest. And the reason for this was because Rama was descended from the line of Suryavansha, the dynasty of Surya-deva himself, and derived much of his energy from that celestial orb.
It was almost noon now. And Angad was witnessing a just-born sparrow grow to full maturity with the aid of the sun god’s light alone.
The sparrow twittered again, this time in the full-throated voice of an adult bird and flew up into the air a few yards above the mound. All eyes turned to watch it instinctively. It hovered there, flapping its wings frantically, and Angad stared at it because he knew that sparrows, like most other birds, could not hover long in the same place. Certainly not as long as this sparrow.
As he watched, the sparrow’s wings beat faster, until they were a blur, seeming almost to stand still.
The sparrow split into two.
Now, there were two sparrows, both full-grown, both hovering.
Both chirruped together, and instantly split into two each.
Now, there were four.
They split into eight.
Then sixteen
Then … at this point, Angad lost the ability to count how many sparrows there were, for the splitting increased in speed, taking place so fast that it was as if sparrows were emerging from thin air—or from a beam of sunlight. In moments, there were hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, and finally, a cloud— the size of a small hill—hung over the heads of the staring vanars and bears, and over the snake-infested bodies of Rama and Lakshman.
The sound made by those lakhs of sparrows was enormous, filling the air for miles around. Angad felt his father at his side, staring up in amazement. ‘What are they doing? Where did they come from?’ asked Sugreeva.
Finding himself momentarily unable to answer, Angad simply pointed upwards.
The cloud of sparrows had resolved itself into a distinct shape, unmistakable even when seen from this angle. It was the shape of a gigantic eagle.
Plaksa came up slowly to Angad’s left, aided by his great-grandsons. ‘Garuda,’ he said in a reverential voice. ‘There can be no doubt about it. The lord of birds has himself descended from swarga-lok.’
The enormous eagle-shaped mass of sparrows hovered a moment longer above the mound. Sensing what it intended to do, Angad broke out of his stupor and called out urgently to his lieutenants. They obeyed instantly, and the troops gathered around the mound responded with matching swiftness. In moments, everyone had moved back, clearing the mound.
The gigantic eagle, for that was what it was, Angad knew now for certain, dipped low, the point of its beak aimed at the prone form of Rama. Darting down, it plucked at a snake’s tail and tugged at it sharply, yanking the snake free of Rama’s body. It came loose with a sucking sound that was disturbing to hear, and with its head and body covered in bloody slime. Jerking its neck, the eagle gobbled down the snake as if it were no more than a worm. It pecked sharply at another snake, pulled it out and swallowed it down as well. It continued pulling out snakes and eating them with a seemingly bottomless appetite. Angad knew that this ‘eagle’ was nothing more than a cloud of sparrows clustered closely together. Then how could little sparrows pluck out snakes almost as thick as his own wrist and swallow them down one after another? This convinced him that this was indeed Garuda himself, descended to earth.
‘He is not permitted to come to our realm during this age, the Treta Yuga,’ said Plaksa. ‘Hence he chooses this form.’
‘And he has come to save us,’ Sugreeva exulted.
They watched as the great being consumed the last of the snakes binding Rama. The mortal yodha remained prone on the ground, his body covered with numerous lacerations resembling snake bites. For a brief moment of doubt, Angad feared that even the great bird lord’s efforts had failed, that Rama was already dead and would remain so. But then he recalled what Plaksa had said earlier: If they are already dead, then why would Indrajit’s arrow-snakes not leave the corpses? The only purpose the snakes serve is to keep them bound and helpless in a deathlike state. For only by continually infusing their bodies with their toxic venom can they keep the sons of Dasaratha unconscious. The moment they stop biting them, the Brahman shakti in their blood will rid their bodies of the toxins and they will revive.
Even as he watched, Garuda finished removing the last of the snakes from Lakshman’s body as well.
Then the bird lord moved forward and extended his arms. They had bird claws, but they were also anthropomorphic hands, somewhat like the half-bird, half-man form of Rama’s late lamented associate Jatayu whom he had seen on one or two occasions. Except that Garuda, the eagle lord of the heavenly realms, was much more beautiful, proud and fierce than Jatayu, the vulture lord of the hellish realms. Garuda touched his hands to Rama’s forehead and leaned forward as if to kiss him. Angad distinctly watched the lord of birds draw something out of Rama’s head, and saw a greenish effusion, like a wisp of jadecoloured liquid, pass out of Rama and into the sparrow cloud. Garuda repeated this with Lakshman, ridding both brothers of the toxins accumulated in their bodies.
Then Garuda moved back, the wind of his great wings compelling Angad and the others to move back as well.
After a long, anxious moment, Rama’s eyes opened. A moment or two later he began to stir, first leaning on his elbow, then sitting up unsupported.
The cheer that rose from the assembled vanar and bear armies was enough to make the earth shake.
Soon after, Lakshman revived as well.
Both brothers sat up and stared at the remarkable being that hovered before them.
Rama joined his palms and said in a voice as calm and peaceful as if he had woken from a deep sleep, not a near-death state. ‘You have brought our spirits back from the realm of Yama-deva who was transporting us to the afterlife. You have given us back our strength and rid our bodies of the last drop of venom. Who are you, great and shining one, and how may we repay you for this great boon of life you have given us?’
Out of the cloud of sparrows, came a sound like a bird calling in the distance. It was the sweetest, most beautiful birdsong Angad had ever heard. In its tone he could hear something akin to language, yet far beyond the clumsy mechanism of words and their inefficient sounds. It was a pure, clear song that went directly to his soul and was understood perfectly in all its subtle nuances and numerous shades of meanings. Putting that lyrical song into crude speech would have made it sound something like this:
~I am Garuda,~ it said. ~I came here because you were entrapped by Ravana’s son using the powers of the devas who were compelled to aid him in his war. Nothing on this realm could have saved you. And your great and valiant follower, despite his enormous strength and loyalty, could never have found the
mountains of herbs in the ocean of milk. Hence Lord Indra sent me here to aid you.~
‘Indra-deva?’ Lakshman asked. ‘Why does he take an interest in our lives?’
~Recall who it was who felled you thus, and why he bears his given name.~
Indrajit. Literally, Defeater of Indra. So named for his victory over the king of the realm of the devas. Of course Indra had a vested stake in seeing Indrajit foiled. Angad smiled at the irony and appropriateness of the deva’s act.
~And since he cannot come himself, for all the devas are forbidden to directly use their powers to attack or defeat Ravana and his forces in any fashion, he sent me here to revive you. It was the only way.~
Rama and Lakshman stood and joined their palms together in perfect unison, bowing in tandem before the lord of all birdkind. ‘We thank you, great one. Please assure Lord Indra on our behalf that we shall do everything in our power to defeat the rakshasa who once humiliated him and took his name as a reminder of that incident.’
Garuda issued a sound that, had he been a mortal, would have sounded like delighted laughter. ~You will indeed, Lord Rama. We already know this. Farewell.~
And with a flurry of wings, the cloud of birds started blurring faster and faster, until in the gap between one blink of an eye and the next, it simply disappeared out of existence.
A single feather floated to the ground on the cool refreshing sea breeze that had suddenly begun to blow from the east. Angad went and picked it up. It was a sparrow feather, tiny and soft. He looked up at the clear, cloudless azure-blue sky. The sun was directly overhead. The time was precisely noon.
ELEVEN
Ravana received the news with equanimity.
‘I see,’ was all he said.
He sat upon his great throne and looked out impassively upon the crowd of ministers of war, generals, and other officers of Lanka’s governance, several of his heads apparently sleeping or engaged in deep contemplation. No, not contemplation, Supanakha thought, meditation. But why is Ravana meditating at a time like this? And why is he taking the news so calmly?
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 84