PRINCE IN EXILE (23 page)

Rama said, ‘“Will you not deny this sun that shines above, this canopy of cloud, this panoply of gold and bronze? Or are these more deserving of your witness than that one sweet night of wedlock?”’ 

‘“For even though the eyes grow dim, the mind falters, the head is dizzy from the elixir of wealth and power, yet does the heart remember truly, and your lips, and your tongue, and every flame-singed hair on your skin recall. So ask your body, what the body remembers, what the soul holds tight in its fist, and come back, come back to me again.”’ Sita finished with a long sigh. Resting her head on Rama’s chest, she said, ‘Why are all the most beautiful love poems so melancholy?’ 

‘I don’t know. Remind me to ask the poet.’ 

‘Ask your guru.’ 

‘Guru Vashishta?’ 

She pinched his arm, laughing. ‘Brahmarishi Vishwamitra. You know that! It’s his daughter’s tale, isn’t it? Considerably embellished and dressed up suitably for presentation before patrons and kings by the poet laureate, no doubt, but still the tale of Sakuntala, and her tragic love for Dushyanta. Their son was Bharata, the father of the Arya nations.’ 

‘Really?’ Rama said, feigning innocence. ‘How remarkable is that! Tell me more, maiden from Mithila.’ 

She smiled, untroubled by his teasing. She loved the story enough to tell it a hundred times - or hear it being told. ‘Sakuntala lived and served her widowed father Vishwamitra in his forest hermitage in remote Kanwavan. One day she went down to the stream to fetch water as usual and found a handsome man lying unconscious. He was Dushyanta, a raja wounded during a hunting accident. The sage’s daughter tended to him until his wounds healed. Now do you remember the story?’ 

Rama frowned, tapping his cheek with an expression of mock-concentration. ‘Not really. It sounds vaguely familiar, but … ‘ He shook his head. ‘Not a thing. Must be that blow on the head I took when my horse rode under a low-hanging bough the other day, hunting wild stag in the woods.’ 

She tousled his hair affectionately. ‘I’ll give you such a blow—’ 

‘Okay! Okay!’ he said, laughing as she resorted to tickling next. ‘I remember now! How could I forget? It’s taught at every gurukul in the seven nations. It is the story of our founding father’s birth after all!’ 

He leaned closer to her. ‘The truth is, I like hearing you tell it. The sound of your voice … ‘ 

‘Yes?’ 

He gestured to the north-west, towards the unmistakable sound of the river. ‘It harmonises with the song of Sarayu. As if you were speaking with the voice of the river herself.’ 

Sita was silent for a moment. Rama turned his head to examine her profile in the dim light of the city. She looked more alluring to him than any portrait of apsaras or gandharvas, those celestial temptresses that adorned the palace of the Indra-dev. Yet there was something in that profile that also reminded him of the likeness of the devi his mother worshipped. Goddess and celestial beauty: surely it was conceivable that both qualities could be contained in one womanly form? The proof stood beside him, made flesh. 

‘That is the first lover’s compliment you’ve paid me since we met.’ Her voice was soft, an undertone to the murmuring song of the Sarayu. 

He leaned low, breathing warm against her cheek. ‘But not the last.’ He nuzzled her cheek. ‘Our marriage may have taken place expediently, but our courtship shall last a lifetime.’ 

She laughed softly. ‘Now you’re getting carried away, my lord. You don’t need to be that lavish with your compliments to get me to recite the tale of Sakuntala!’ She added softly, ‘Although the compliments are welcome.’ 

He smiled at her in the darkness, white teeth flashing in his dark face. ‘And well deserved. I meant what I said about your voice and the river. You two might well be sister-bards. Were you ever a river in your past life? Or a waterfall?’ 

She rolled her eyes in mock exasperation, then realised he probably couldn’t see the expression. ‘Back to the story, my lord. As I was saying, Sakuntala tended to the wounded king until he effected a complete recovery. In the process, he grew enchanted by her lustrous beauty.’ 

‘Lustrous beauty,’ Rama repeated softly, lifting her hair off her shoulder. ‘That describes you well.’ 

She brushed his hand away gently but firmly. ‘Dushyanta induced Sakuntala to enter into a gandharva vivah with him.’ 

Rama touched the nape of her neck. ‘Gandharva vivah? A fancy euphemism that simply means they exchanged vows without witnesses or pundits present, probably before a stone lingam in the forest.’ 

She continued smoothly. ‘Intoxicated by their mutual passion, Dushyanta and Sakuntala dallied together, desiring only to stay thus for ever, content with the simple forest life and each other’s love. But of course, he was a king. And for a king, dharma came before self. Finally the day arrived when his mantris and senapatis, after a long, exhaustive search, sought him out in that deep forest.’ 

‘If I was he,’ Rama commented, ‘I would have taken her and gone someplace where they could never be found.’ 

‘But then what of your dharma?’ she asked, only half teasing. 

He sighed, nodding to her to go on. 

‘Raja Dushyanta gave Sakuntala his ring and vowed to her that he would return very soon and take her home as a queen-bride to his palace, there to reign beside him to the end of their days. Then he rode away.’ 

‘Ah,’ Rama said. ‘And then it all turns sad. Like all Sanskrit dramas, and … ‘ 

And
life?
Is that what you meant to say, my love?
But he didn’t complete the sentence, and she went on. 

‘Weeks passed. And then months. And then years went by. And still Sakuntala waited patiently, secure in her love. But still Dushyanta didn’t return. Finally, she decided she must go to him. And after a long and arduous journey—’ 

‘Why do the protagonists always have to suffer at this point in the story? Is there some kind of formula that all playwrights employ, or—’ 

‘After much hardship, Sakuntala reached the court of Raja Dushyanta and presented herself before him. But because of a curse cast upon her by an irate sage—’ 

‘Another staple of Sanskrit drama! The shraap by the offended sage!’ 

‘Because of Sage Durvasa’s curse, the raja failed to recognise her and flatly denied their relationship as well as their child, Bharata. Then, in that speech we mauled a little while earlier, she lamented his loss of memory and their forgotten love.’ 

Rama feigned a melodramatic sigh, holding a limp wrist to his forehead. ‘I’m lamenting, lamenting.’ 

‘But her love was too great to deny, and the devas saw fit to reunite them against all odds. Sakuntala’s ring, lost by her in a river crossing en route to see the raja, was swallowed by a fish. The fish itself was fortuitously caught by a fisherman, who brought it to the same court on the same day, as a humble gift to the raja.’ 

‘How convenient,’ he murmured. ‘But how poetic as well. Go on, my love, finish the fish-tale.’ 

‘When the fish was cut open, the ring was found within its belly, with the raja’s seal upon it. The instant the raja laid eyes on the ring, the curse was circumvented, and his memory returned at once. He realised how terribly he had acted by spurning Sakuntala. He rode into the forest after her with an army and full entourage, and came upon her in the Kanwa-van, raising the product of their love, little Bharata.’ 

‘Father of our nation, if he only knew it.’ 

‘Dushyanta fell to his knees before Sakuntala, begged her forgiveness and entreated her to return to Ayodhya with him. She relented, and they rode back together as king and queen, exactly as she had once dreamed, at the head of a great procession. And Sakuntala got everything she had ever desired, but most of all she had the love of Dushyanta.’ 

Into the silence that followed, a nightbird called mournfully, as if asking for something it knew it could never have. 

Rama said, ‘And did they live happily ever after?’ 

‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘You know the story as well as I do.’ 

He was silent for a moment, then turned and faced her. ‘Of course they did. Otherwise the poet who composed that drama wouldn’t have got paid a single coin for his work!’ 

Sita laughed. ‘Maybe so. But maybe it was also because it’s true. They did live happily ever after.’ 

‘A tragedy with a happy ending.’ 

‘A what?’ 

‘That’s what Guru Vashishta once said to us, when explaining prosody and the art of composition. He said that to be truly memorable, a story must be in essence a very sad tale, a great tragedy, but with a happy ending.’ 

‘Why?’ 

He shrugged. ‘Because that is the kind of story that pleases the human heart the most to hear. Great sadness, great suffering, great odds, but in the end, jaya.’ 

‘Triumph.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

Rama sniffed the air, suddenly distracted. A raat ki rani had just blossomed somewhere, its eloquent fragrance whispering softly on the night wind. He looked at Sita to see if she smelled it. She nodded, inhaling too. They stood, enveloped in the perfume of the night. 

The river sang to them. 

NINETEEN 

Dasaratha woke to find himself lying on a bed of dried rustling leaves with the taste of blood and iron in his mouth. He groaned and tried to raise himself. He was disoriented and confused, unable to remember anything at first. All he knew was that he must get up at once,
move
, get away from this place,
get to safety
. There were asuras here, he was surrounded and in great danger.
Move! Flee! 

As he put weight upon his feet, a searing pain in his right leg pierced through the fog that filled his brain. Suddenly he remembered everything with crystal clarity. The flurry of arrows, the sharp agony in his right shoulder as an arrow struck deep enough to hit bone, the bristling staffs of half a dozen arrows embedded in his charioteer’s face, neck and chest – poor devil – and the screams from all around as his rally was broken by the unexpected fury of the asura rebuttal.
Yaksas
, he remembered himself thinking as he clenched a fist,
the pisacas have been reinforced by yaksa longbows
. The yaksas were deadly with their enormous curved bonewood bows, deadlier even than Mithilan bowmasters. 

He heard the ghoulish cries of the pisaca and yaksa forces as they came thundering down the gorge, and heard his own voice calling out to
hold fast, hold fast
, even as his lead horse whinnied and succumbed to its own arrow-wounds. The other horses lost their rhythm and stumbled chaotically, tumbling pell-mell on the steep crumbling way. Dasaratha saw that there was no help for it, the chariot would go over regardless of what he did, and leaped just in time. As he flew, the corner of the footboard of the chariot slashed his leg, gouging flesh from his calf, and threw him over on to his head. 

He fell badly, partly upon his wounded shoulder and head, cracking or breaking his collarbone as well. The arrow snapped off, the point digging deeper, probing bone. The voice of Sumantra called out from somewhere close behind, shouting his name, calling out that the maharaja had fallen, rally to the maharaja. A great cloud of dust swirled up the gorge like a dervish out of hell, and through the seething, boiling cloud, Dasaratha saw the asura forces emerge, roaring and gnashing their teeth. He groaned, not for his own wounds and pain, which he hardly felt at all in the heat of his battle-fury, but for his exhausted forces. The reinforced asura numbers would surely break the back of this rally as well now. Would this battle never end? How much more must Dasaratha pound these wretched beasts, pound them with all the might of his army, the dwindling forces of Kaikeya and Kosala, the beleaguered and all-butbesieged men and women exhausted and depleted after three days and nights of sleepless, endless battle. 

He started to rise, to reach for his sword, his lance, anything. But his foot would not take his weight, his shoulder refusing to respond, the arrowhead driven into some vital muscle juncture that left his arm dangling uselessly. And in that moment, the worst of all such moments he had faced in his time, Dasaratha knew that he would die here in this dust-riddled gully close to a strategic plateau. He knew yet again, a thing so easily known and even more easily forgotten, that the only true rewards of war were ash and dust, nothing more. Not gold, not glory, not peace – that most foolishly sought prize of all, as if wholesale butchery and hatred could ever engender a thing as bloodless and innocent as peace – only blood, and dust and ash. The asura forces had engaged with the front line of his host, Sumantra bravely and desperately struggling to hold a brutally battered line against the juggernaut. Dasaratha had found and gripped a throwing spear and now he clutched it in his left hand, ready to go down, taking as many as he could with him. The roar of battle filled his ears, the dust and stench of death his nostrils. 

Then he heard a thundering of hoofs and wheels as a chariot rode up alongside him, enshrouded in its own cloud of dust, but before he could turn and see who it was, the first of the enemy was upon him, and he was battling for his life. He saw one pisaca go down in a screaming, writhing bundle, then another’s throat slashed to bloody ruin by the spear he was swinging like a sword, then he glimpsed one clever bastard leap down from the ridge, upon him.