PRINCE IN EXILE (92 page)

Both rakshasas turned their eyes upon Vibhisena as he disembarked shakily from the Pushpak. Mandodhari was already standing on the polished redstone platform, her face averted. Vibhisena sensed that she was disgusted by his weakness, reading it as fear of Ravana. He did not blame her. But he knew without any trace of self-deception that this churning of his bowels was born of fear, not of his brother, but of the storm that he sensed approaching. A storm of which Ravana would be the epicentre and anchor. He had read the portents well, and had known for a long while now that no amount of tapasya or offerings would deflect the inevitable. The only thing he had not been able to read clearly was the exact time of the crisis. Now, with Ravana’s reawakening imminent, that moment could not be far away. 

Behind him, he sensed a rush of wind as the Pushpak lifted away from the floor of the vast cavern and left, no doubt on some other pressing errand for Mandodhari. 

He executed a namaskar, trying to keep his voice as steady as possible. ‘Greetings, my nephews.’ 

Indrajit grunted a response without raising his massive haunch-thick hands. Akshay Kumar joined his palms together in a gracious but distracted response. ‘Well met, Uncle.’ 

Mandodhari spoke brusquely, cutting off any further attempt at social grace. ‘He is still paralysed. Only his mind has awoken.’ 

Both boys turned to her. Vibhisena joined them as they moved across the mirror-polished redstone to the raised altar that lay in its centre. The resemblance to a sarcophagus was too obvious to comment on. Not unintentionally, Mandodhari had designed this private sanctum such that it could be regarded as a vast tomb rather than the so-called ‘den’ that it was called. He looked at Ravana’s prone body, lying upon the elevated gleaming slab of blackstone centred on the redstone altar. Ravana looked every bit the same as when Vibhisena had first witnessed him being placed here, almost a decade earlier when this chamber was first carved out. No evidence of atrophy or decrepitation was visible upon that magnificent body. The finest sculptor in the three worlds, working with infinite patience and skill could hardly have chiselled a more perfect statue. While Mandodhari’s skin was pleasingly wheatish in tone, Ravana’s was glowingly fair. Even Akshay Kumar, though he was referred to as the Shining One, could not match Ravana’s resplendent skin tone and appearance; before his father’s perfect body, Indrajit’s physique appeared over-developed and unnatural. Ravana was perfection personified in terms of physical beauty. Even the ten heads at the top of that magnificent torso seemed almost inevitable, a fitting detail to round out the genius of the whole creation. 

Yet Vibhisena cautioned himself to look beyond the obvious, for he knew that maya, the art of illusion, was a well-kept secret of the Pulastya rakshasas of Ravana’s line. Ravana had repeatedly offered to cast a maya jal, a mesh of illusion, for him as well, altering his grotesque features into a more attractive exterior, one that would reflect his inner goodness and gentleness. Vibhisena had refused. It did not bother him that he appeared ugly and monstrous so long as he was not ugly and monstrous in truth. 

Whereas, consider Ravana. All that extraordinary, resplendent beauty of form and persona and yet, on closer, more clinical observation, you began to see beyond first impressions. Soon, if you looked with critical eyes, that very resplendence seemed disturbing, excessive, like a bauble so gaudy that it clamoured incessantly, offensively, for attention. When alive and active, Ravana’s masculine beauty and sculpted musculature were so overt and explicit, Vibhisena had to resist the urge to step back. Other rakshasas often did so, while rakshasis were drawn to move closer, hypnotised by the sheer virility that he exuded. It was like standing face-to-face with a blue Nilgiri stag, a beast so immense and overwhelming—seven feet high at the shoulder, with an additional six feet of multibranched bristling antlers—that the female of the species came to the bull without any need for pursuit or courting. Even lying lifeless, with every one of those ten pairs of eyes shut, Ravana possessed almost as potent an attraction. 

‘He will awaken soon,’ Vibhisena said, forcing himself to look away at long last. 

Mandodhari’s face twisted with disbelief. ‘How can you be so sure? You did not know he would awaken yesterday, or last year. Or ten years ago. What makes you so certain today?’ 

‘He says so,’ Vibhisena replied shortly. He had no desire to get into an argument with his sister-in-law, especially now. ‘He spoke to me a while back, and said he would be up and about very shortly.’ 

All three of them turned to look at the motionless body lying on the altar. Ravana’s chest barely rose and fell with each breath. If not for the mirror positioned strategically above his face, a tiny portion of which kept misting over periodically—at very spare intervals—he could be mistaken for a corpse. Albeit a very lifelike and virile-looking corpse. 

Indrajit bunched his fist, as if he meant to strike his father. ‘So this is your doing then?’ He turned his red-rimmed eyes on Vibhisena, the fist held by his side. ‘Uncle?’ 

Vibhisena swallowed nervously, shaking his head. ‘Nay. I do not possess the shakti to resuscitate him on my own, nobody does. I have done all I could through prayer and tapasya. But one element remained that I could not provide.’ 

‘What element?’ Akshay Kumar looking at him with startled suspicion, as if he had suddenly revealed that he possessed a second, invisible head. 

Vibhisena glanced at Mandodhari. She was staring at him with a look that conveyed threat, warning and anger all at once. 

‘A foreign element,’ he said shortly. ‘Something that could not be provided from Lanka and we had no means of procuring ourselves.’ 

Akshay Kumar made an impatient, almost foppish gesture, rolling his hand. ‘Yes, yes, but go on … what element was this?’ 

Vibhisena locked eyes with Mandodhari. The communication in her steely blue orbs was clear as crystal. He cleared his throat, choosing his response carefully. ‘I don’t know. That is why we could not procure it.’ 

You lie
,
brother
.
You lie because my dearly beloved wife has warned you of the consequences if you reveal the truth
.
You knew all along what was needed to complete my resuscitation
,
but under pressure from Mandodhari
,
you simply declined to fetch it
.
But you knew that I was not destined to stay thus forever
,
whatever Mandodhari may desire
,
and so it chances that today that
‘
foreign element
’
as you so diplomatically term it
,
has come to Lanka
’
s shores unbidden
,
and in mere moments
,
it will be conveyed to this chamber and I will be revived wholly
. 

FOUR 

Mandodhari was the first to speak, her lips working even before Vibhisena finished absorbing the last implications of Ravana’s unspoken words. ‘Nay, my lord. I asked him to revive you, I prayed to the devas that it might happen. But he only repeated what he said just now, that one more element was required, and he did not know what that element might be.’ 

Silence
,
you shrew
.
Don
’
t bore me with your lies
.
I
’
ve seen the changes you
’
ve made to the kingdom
.
It would please you to let me stay thus for another thousand years
.
You would rule Lanka on your own terms then
. 

Mandodhari cried out in dismay, clapping her hands to her cheeks. Vibhisena blinked in surprise at the conviction in her tone as she said, ‘My lord! My husband. Have I not stayed chaste and loyal to you through your long incapacitation? My thoughts have been only of you for thirteen long years. With your infinite powers, you can verify that for yourself. Why, then, do you doubt me? I am as spotless as the day you left my bedside to ride for the mortal realm those many years ago.’ 

Chaste
?
Of course you
’
ve stayed chaste all these years
,
Mandodhari
.
You hate the act of pleasuring almost as much as you hate the male of our species
!
Don
’
t pretend that you stayed faithful to our vows because of your own fidelity
.
You did it because you would sooner emasculate a rakshasa than couple with him
.
I almost wish you had been unfaithful to me
.
Riotously unfaithful
,
with a thousand different rakshasas
.
At least then you would have been too busy to turn my island into a feminine paradise
.
Marital fidelity is a foolish myth perpetuated by mortals
.
What you did was the worst kind of betrayal
.
You took over my kingdom itself and tried to change it to suit your own ambitions
! 

Mandodhari’s response was immediate. To Vibhisena’s astonishment, she knelt before the altar, throwing her arms around her husband’s still form, burying her face in his chest. ‘My lord, I beg of you, do not slander me thus. Everything I did was in your interests. I rebuilt Lanka from the ruins it was reduced to after the asura riots—’ 

Riots that you stoked and encouraged by sowing dissent between the races
.
You always did hate my alliances with the other asuras
,
so you eliminated all other survivors
,
the nagas
,
uragas
,
pisacas
,
daityas
…
and now you have what you always wanted
,
a Lanka populated only with rakshasas
. 

‘—a Lanka I rebuilt for you, my husband! How was I to keep the rakshasas in check after you were incapacitated? They were fomenting civil war. Our clan alone remained faithful and that too only because they sought to gain some political advantage from your absence. But even the Pulastyas could not have held back all the other rakshasas had they chosen to overthrow your reign. And so I replaced the whip with the goad of duty. I convinced the clan chief that our first, most urgent goal, was to rebuild Lanka. That if the mortals could decimate our entire invasion army—the greatest ever assembled in the history of the world—then surely it would be simple enough for them to invade Lanka and weed us out completely. That was my only aim in rebuilding Lanka, to fortify us against any threat of mortal invasion.’ 

There was a brief moment of silence, during which Vibhisena saw even Akshay Kumar and Indrajit looking marginally softened by their mother’s eloquent, emotional outburst. When Ravana’s mindvoice resumed, it sounded slightly less belligerent and accusatory. 

Seen in that light
…
perhaps you did some good after all
.
I will verify this by scanning the minds and memories of other Pulastyas
,
my good wife
,
so if you are lying
… 

‘If I lie, then subject me to the agni-pariksha.’ 

Vibhisena blinked uncontrollably. The agni-pariksha, test of fire, was the harshest acid test any wife could be subjected to: yet Mandodhari invoked it so casually, he began to doubt his suspicions of her. He could hear Ravana’s mindvoice echoing the same doubt now. 

If that is so
,
my queen
…
If you did what you did not as a means of wresting power away from me and initiated the rebuilding as a means of reuniting the clans and fortifying Lanka
,
then
… 

Mandodhari waited with supreme patience. She could have been watching a sunset for all the care that showed on her marblesque features. 

…
Then it was a stroke of genius
.
I could not have thought up a better device myself
.
My way would have been to simply step out and hack away a few thousand heads until the rebellion was quelled
,
but to actually unite the clans in harmony and get them to work together
,
rebuilding
…
I would not have thought of it in a million years
.
What can I say then
,
mother of my children
…
You have surprised me
.
And I thought nothing could ever surprise me again
.
It is a brilliant military strategem you implemented
,
Mandodhari
.