PRINCE IN EXILE (118 page)

Hanuman watched Lakshman skewer a line of vegetables which they had washed in the brook after their evening ritual. Out of deference to the meatless diet of the vanars, Rama and Lakshman had decided to stay without meat themselves. In any case, neither of them had had much appetite for the past several days. This was the first fire they had lit since Sita’s abduction, and even this they had done only because Rama had felt the need to mark their alliance with the vanars in some fashion. 

He watched Hanuman’s eyes following Lakshman’s every move. The vanar had a frank innocence that was fascinating to watch. It made Rama feel jaded and soul-weary. He sighed and passed a hand across his face, feeling his hand tremble ever so slightly as he did so. That hand had begun trembling this way ever since he had loosed that last arrow and watched it spiral hopelessly through the empty blue sky, the last echoes of Ravana’s laughter ringing in his ears. 

‘Are you well, Lord Rama? You seem … troubled.’ Hanuman’s voice was softly anxious. All vanars were overly attentive—as the crowd of gawking watchers around them testified—but their new friend and ally was preternaturally so. Rama had found he could scarcely draw a breath or speak a word to Lakshman without Hanuman inquiring as to its meaning. 

He tried to mask his inner turmoil with a smile. His treacherous right hand he kept down by his side, in an attempt to conceal the faint tremor that threatened to return at any moment. The smile felt unconvincing and forced but he maintained it nevertheless. ‘Just weary, my friend. It was a long journey across the forested plains of Janasthana and over the redmist mountains. It took us nigh on five days of incessant travelling to reach Mount Rishimukha and we ran most of that time.’ 

Hanuman looked unconvinced. The vanar had watched him surreptitiously for countless hours, and had been witness to any number of occasions when Rama had led his ragged band through the jungles, pursued by or pursuing rakshasas, fighting incessantly, rarely sleeping or resting, always on the move, under threat, engaged in violence. A simple five-day run barely seemed sufficient to tire this legendary mortal yoddha. But the sooner Hanuman understood that Rama was simply mortal, not some indestructible yoddha, the better it would be for both of them. 

He must learn that his hero was subject to all the normal vicissitudes of human endurance and emotion. Moreover, Rama’s excuse, lame as it might seem at first hearing, was not an outright lie—he was weary indeed, but the weariness was of the heart and soul, not the body. 

Rather than try to explain all this aloud, Rama let silence speak for him. The vanar was intelligent enough to perceive the deeper meanings beneath the superficial rudiments of verbal communication. Rama sensed great, hidden wellsprings submerged beneath this creature’s wide, innocently staring gaze. There was a great deal more to Hanuman than outward appearances suggested. 

As if echoing his thoughts, Hanuman spoke aloud quietly, his voice barely audible above the crackling of fire and the sudden outburst of playful screeches from a clutch of younguns in a peepal tree nearby. Young vanars raced from branch to branch, playing what seemed to be a vanar form of chhupa-chhupi, the time-honoured game of hide and seek. 

‘It must have been very bitter,’ Hanuman said. ‘Like the juice of a gourd infested with worm-eggs. A difficult mouthful to swallow.’ He added quietly: ‘Seeing your mate being abducted by that demon out of hell.’ 

‘Bitter as venom,’ Rama said. A muscle in his forearm twitched once, furiously, and he felt his jaws tighten. ‘What I regretted most was that I could not stop it. That I was not there when he came to take her. That I allowed myself to be tricked into leaving her alone, duped by the petty chicanery of asura maya.’ 

He stopped himself there, but in his mind the words rolled on relentlessly; self-accusatory, biting, inescapable.
I should have been with her
,
I should have been there to fight him
,
I should have done something
,
somehow
.
How could I just let him take her
? 

Hanuman sighed. The sound expressed the weight of all that Rama carried in his clogged heart. ‘I scent from your sorrow,’ he said, ‘that she is a mate like no other.’ 

‘You scent truly,’ Rama replied, shocked by how readily his emotions had sprung up in response to a few comments. Had he changed so much so soon then? Or been changed, by the event? Perhaps. It would bear watching. He forced his jaw to relax before his back teeth ground against one another. ‘There are none comparable to her.’ 

He felt Hanuman’s eyes upon him, but kept his own gaze steadily directed at the fire over which Lakshman was preparing their meal. The fire crackled as a little juice oozed and dripped from the cracked skin of a jewel-fruit. The sounds in the nearby trees had faded as the watching hordes finally began to lose interest and returned to their vanar pastimes. The happy sounds of vanar littleuns and younguns playing and thrashing in the trees and across the mountainside in the growing dusk provided a stark contrast to the sombre mood that hung over the mortal campfire. For long moments, the only sound was the crackle and hiss of the fire as Lakshman, squatting before the spit, turned it from time to time. 

Finally, Hanuman turned away, producing a sound halfway between a vanar sniff and a mortal sigh. ‘She was your favourite then? Of all your mates back in Ayodhya?’ 

Rama turned his eyes on him. The vanar returned his gaze at once, the fur on his face stirring attentively. 

‘My friend, I have no other mates. Sita was my only chosen partner.’ 

Hanuman blinked. Twin blades of fire-grass leaped and danced in his red pupils. Rama noticed a deep scar beginning just behind his left ear and running behind his head. The vanar made that sniffing action that Rama was starting to learn meant curiosity: ‘But you have other females whom you breed with? Clan-mothers who take your seed?’ 

Rama shook his head slowly. ‘No, my friend. I have taken only one wife in this lifetime. And she is Sita. I give my embrace to none other.’ 

Hanuman stared at him with his snout raised up, eyes peering down the length of the proboscis. The vanar’s nostrils were flared. Rama assumed that this was some universal vanar way of showing surprise. ‘My Lord Rama, I do not understand. You are a king. Scion of a great dynasty of kings. Surely you must protect your lineage. You must be mated many times to bear enough heirs to ensure the survival of your bloodline.’ 

Rama laid a hand on the vanar’s arm. The fur felt soft and downy, but was crusted with dirt and stiff in patches. Clearly, vanars were not overly fond of regular washing. ‘First of all, call me only Rama. There is no need for titles here. We are brothers in arms now, Lakshman, you and I. As for the choosing of mates and also as to the number of such mates, my friend, we Aryas hold them to be an individual’s personal choice. It is true what you say, that as the scion of an illustrious dynasty, I could choose to take as many wives as I pleased. Yet I chose to take only one mate in this lifetime, and Sita is that chosen one. I chose her over all others, abjuring other wives for the rest of the duration of my mortal lifetime. She in turn chose me at a public swayamvara, not only because I was able to complete the given challenge, but because it pleased her to take me as her husband. We are sworn to one another only, and have forsworn all others.’ 

Hanuman raised his snout still higher, peering at the darkling sky. Plumes of smoke from Lakshman’s fire rose in curls and puffs, rising high in the twilight stillness. 

‘Strange,’ he said at last after pondering Rama’s words. ‘Strange indeed. I did not know mortal ways were so different from our own. Among the vanarkind, things are not so. Our Prince Angad alone has five clutches of fine female stock eagerly awaiting his seed.’ He glanced at Rama. ‘That would be ten hands in your counting.’ He thrust his paws out, strong, calloused palms thickened by years of gripping rough branches. 

Rama nodded. ‘It is not so different among us, Hanuman. My father had three titled wives, of which my mother is titled First Queen. Lakshman himself is my half-brother, from my clan-mother Third Queen Sumitra, as is his twin Shatrugan. While our other brother Bharat is the son of Rani Kaikeyi, Second Queen. While each of my brothers has taken one wife each thus far,’ he paused to swallow briefly, trying not to think of the wedding at Mithila and how Sita looked in her shimmering new bridal finery, ‘but may take others in time, as they please. Yet there is no compulsion. Each one may choose how many mates he would have, and even how many of them he would wed and grant the title of princess.’ 

‘I scent your meaning,’ Hanuman said slowly. ‘With us, it is slightly different, as I mentioned to you back in Janasthana. The women choose their mates, not the men. And they take as many or as few as they please, when they please. Men can vie for a vanari’s affections, even fight and kill for her, but they cannot compel her.’ He grimaced. ‘Or so it was until the usurper Vali’s evil rule.’ 

Rama nodded. ‘I did not mention it to you then, but once it was so with us too. Arya women were the heads of their clans and masters of all property. Back then, they chose their mates and husbands, a vestige of which tradition continues in the swayamvara. For that matter, it is not unheard of for even an Arya woman to choose to take more than one husband.’ He described a swayamvara he had once heard of where a princess had chosen to wed three brothers whom she had liked equally. 

Hanuman looked interested. ‘So then, at one point, human and vanar mating customs were alike.’ 

Rama nodded. ‘I believe so.’ 

They spoke at length of matters related to human and vanar society and customs. The sky above was a purplish-black panoply embedded with glittering diamonds when Lakshman announced that their meal was finally ready and asked where he might find plantain leaves on which to serve it. Hanuman instantly dashed off to fetch them. 

Hanuman had told Rama that since vanars did not use fire, they slept by darkness and roamed by daylight. Although their vision was fine enough to enable them to see as well by night if they wished, some primordial instinct made them stay in the branches and hand over the jungle to the predators of the night. Only a few like Hanuman himself prowled the jungle by night or ventured out beyond the environs of Rishimukha. Already, scarcely a vanar could be seen or heard and the mountainside was quiet except for the inevitable clicking and chittering of insects and the distant hooting of an owl. 

Rama gazed up at the sky, as richly decorated with stars as a Gandaharan tapestry. In all these thirteen years, he had never been this far east beyond the redmist ranges. He had learned from his band of supporters of the great vanar clans that inhabited this region. Now that he was here and had been among them, he was not surprised to learn that Kiskindha and Rishimukha were only two of the many regions inhabited by vanars. Once, before the rise of mortalkind, vanars had lived even by the banks of the Sarayu, the Ganga, and the land of five rivers. These past few millennia they had retreated to pockets deep in the wilderness, partly driven by the spread of mortal civilisations. Farther east of Kiskindha, there were many fabled nations, including the lands of Cathay and Nippon, and Hanuman had spoken of great settlements of vanars in those lands. Rama wondered if the vanars of those far eastern nations were similar in appearance to the mortals of those nations, if they had developed over the millennia in any manner similar to the way their mortal cohabitants had, or whether all vanars everywhere were much the same. 

He was making a mental note to ask Hanuman these questions when it came to him that Sita had loved the very idea of vanars, sentient, intelligent beings that were simian in appearance but more like mortals in their ways. She had never come this far east either. She would have loved to be here. Had she been here right now, she would be going among these people, speaking to them, learning their folklore and legends, their superstitions and their dialects, everything under the sun that anyone could want to know. He thought that if he shut his eyes he could hear her voice, speaking to the vanar littleuns, could even hear her laughter tinkling, smell the scent of the jasmine flowers in her hair carried by the evening breeze, and if he looked at her, she would turn as if sensing his gaze and flash him a sudden, brief, mysterious smile, her white teeth gleaming in her sunburned brown face, and he would be filled with love so intense his heart would break. 

‘
Rama
.’ 

He opened his eyes and saw Lakshman, holding out a leaf of food. While he had been lost in his reverie, Hanuman had returned with the plantain leaves and Lakshman had served their repast. Rama rubbed at his eyes reflexively, and took the food. 

He put it down by his side without even looking at it. He had no appetite. 

Lakshman handed another leaf of food to Hanuman who accepted it with profuse and elaborate thanks. The vanar sniffed eagerly at the items, then took a big bite of food. ‘Waugh,’ he exclaimed. ‘It burns!’ 

Rama smiled at him. ‘You must wait for the food to cool a little.’ 

Hanuman shot a glance at Rama’s own leaf of food, lying on the rock beside him. ‘Ah, that is why you have set your food aside. Hanuman is foolish. He is new to the eating habits of mortals.’ 

He set his own leaf aside. Lakshman had made a small pit with some of the embers of the fire and was burying nuts in gourds to bake them. Hanuman watched him as he waited for his food to cool, then said to Rama: ‘You must not despair, my lord. We will find her and bring her back home. Doubt it not.’