Prince of Dharma (67 page)

In order to do this, I chose a modern idiom. I simply used the way I speak, an amalgam of English–Hindi–Urdu–Sanskrit, and various other terms from Indian languages. I deliberately used anachronisms like the terms ‘abs’ or ‘morph’. I based every section, every scene, every character’s dialogues and actions on the previous Ramayanas, be it Valmiki, Kamban, Tulsidas, or Vyasa, and even the various Puranas. Everything you read here is based on actual research, or my interpretation of some detail noted in a previous work. The presentation, of course, is wholly original and my own. 

Take the example of the scene of Sita entreating Rama to let her accompany him into exile. In my retelling, I sought to explore the relationship between Rama and Sita at a level that is beyond the physical or social plane. I believed that their’s was a love that was eternally destined, and that their bond surpassed all human ties. At one level, yes, I believed that they were Vishnu and Lakshmi. Yet, in the avatars they were currently in, they were Rama and Sita, two young people caught up in a time of great turmoil and strife, subjected to hard, difficult choices. Whatever their divine backgrounds and karma, here and now, they had to play out their parts one moment at a time, as real, flesh-and-blood people. 

I adopted an approach that was realistic, putting myself (and thereby the reader) into the feelings and thoughts of both Rama and Sita at that moment of choice. I felt the intensity of their pain, the great sorrow and confusion, the frustration at events beyond their control, and also their ultimate acceptance of what was right, what must be done, of dharma. In my version, they argue as young couples will at such a time, they express their anger and mixed emotions, but in the end, it is not only through duty and dharma that she appeals to him. In the end, she appeals to him as a wife who is secure in the knowledge that her husband loves her sincerely, and that the bond that ties them is not merely one of duty or a formal social knot of matrimony, but of true love. After the tears, after all other avenues have been mutually discussed and discarded, she simply says his name and appeals to him, as a wife, a lover, and as his dearest friend: 

‘Rama,’ she said. She raised her arms to him, asking, not pleading. ‘Then let me go with you.’ 

And he agrees. Not as a god, an avatar, or even a prince. But as a man who loves her and respects her. And needs her. 

In the footsteps of giants 

Let me be clear. 

This is not Valmiki’s story. Nor Kamban’s. Nor Tulsidas’s. 

Nor Vyasa’s. Nor R.K. Narayan’s. Nor Rajaji’s charming, abridged children’s version. 

It is Rama’s story. And Rama’s story belongs to every one of us. Black, brown, white, or albino. Old or young. Male or female. Hindu, Christian, Muslim, or whatever faith you espouse. I was once asked at a press conference to comment on the Babri Masjid demolition and its relation to my Ramayana. My answer was that the Ramayana had stood for three thousand years, and would stand for all infinity. Ayodhya, in my opinion, is not just a place in north-central Uttar Pradesh. It is a place in our hearts. And in that most sacred of places, it will live forever, burnished and beautiful as no temple of consecrated bricks can ever be. When Rama himself heard Luv and Kusa recite Valmiki’s Ramayana for the first time, even he, the protagonist of the story, was flabbergasted by the sage’s version of the events—after all, even he had not known what happened to Sita after her exile, nor the childhood of Luv and Kusa, nor had he heard their mother’s version of events narrated so eloquently until then. And in commanding Valmiki to compose the section about future events, Rama himself added his seal of authority to Valmiki, adding weight to Brahma’s exhortation to recite the deeds of Rama that were already known ‘as well as those that are not’. 

And so the tradition of telling and retelling the Ramayana began. It is that tradition that Kamban, Tulsidas, Vyasa, and so many others were following. It is through the works of these bards through the ages that this great tale continues to exist among us. If it changes shape and structure, form and even content, it is because that is the nature of the story itself: it inspires the teller to bring fresh insights to each new version, bringing us ever closer to understanding Rama himself. 

This is why it must be told, and retold, an infinite number of times. 

By me. 

By you. 

By grandmothers to their grandchildren. 

By people everywhere, regardless of their identity. 

The first time I was told the Ramayana, it was on my grandfather’s knee. He was excessively fond of chewing tambaku paan and his breath was redolent of its aroma. Because I loved lions, he infused any number of lions in his Ramayana retellings—Rama fought lions, Sita fought them, I think even Manthara was cowed down by one at one point! My grandfather’s name, incidentally, was Ramchandra Banker. He died of throat cancer caused by his tobacco-chewing habit. But before his throat ceased working, he had passed on the tale to me. 

And now, I pass it on to you. If you desire, and only if, then read this book. I believe if you are ready to read it, the tale will call out to you, as it did to me. If that happens, you are in for a great treat. Know that the version of the Ramayana retold within these pages is a living, breathing, new-born avatar of the tale itself. Told by a living author in a living idiom. It is my humbleattempt to do for this great story what writers down the ages have done with it in their times. 

Maazi naroti 

In closing, I’d like to quote briefly from two venerable authors who have walked similar paths. 

The first is K.M. Munshi whose Krishnavatara series remains a benchmark of the genre of modern retellings of ancient tales. These lines are from Munshi’s own Introduction to the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan edition of 1972: 

In the course of this adventure, I had often to depart from legend and myth, for such a reconstruction by a modern author must necessarily involve the exercise of whatever little imagination he has. I trust He will forgive me for the liberty I am taking, but I must write of Him as I see Him in my imagination. 

I could not have said it better. 

Yuganta, Iravati Karve’s landmark Sahitya Akademi Award-winning study of the Mahabharata, packs more valuable insights into its slender 220-page pocket-sized edition (Disha) than any ten encyclopaedias. In arguably the finest essay of the book, ‘Draupadi’, she includes this footnote: 

‘The discussion up to this point is based on the critical edition of the Mahabharata. What follows is my naroti [naroti = a dry coconut shell, i.e. a worthless thing. The word ‘naroti’ was first used in this sense by the poet Eknath].’ 

In the free musings of Karve’s mind, we learn more about Vyasa’s formidable epic than from most encyclopaedic theses. For only from free thought can come truly progressive ideas. 

In that spirit, I urge readers to consider my dried coconut shell reworking of the Ramayana in the same spirit. 

If anything in the following pages pleases you, thank those great forebears in whose giant footsteps I placed my own small feet. 

If any parts displease you, then please blame them on my inadequate talents, not on the tale. 

ASHOK K. BANKER 

Mumbai

April 2005

PRARAMBH

ONE 

‘Rama …’ 

He twisted on the straw pallet, battling nightmares. A merciless giant tightened her grip on his heart, squeezing harder … harder … 

He thrashed, his naked torso flayed by invisible lashes. Sweat beaded on his muscled limbs, dripping through the crushed darbha blades on to the mud floor of the hut, staining it the dark vermilion hue of heart-blood. 

Beside him, Lakshman slept deeply, too deeply, unnaturally still, curled like a Sanskrit symbol. His chest barely rose and fell, his body’s rhythm slowed to the verge of stasis. 

‘Rama …’ 

Softly, like a gandharva whispering a coy secret. 

Rama moaned, burying his face within the darbha pallet. Reeds of straw scratched his face, pricking his tightly shut eyelids. He fought invisible phantoms. Lakshman slept on, his breath ragged, heartbeat irregular, on the knife edge between dreams and eternal dreamlessness. 

Still softly, but with a sense of growing urgency. 

‘Rama …’ 

He grew still, then utterly motionless, remaining that way for a long frozen moment. A vein pulsed steadily on his neck, the only sign of life. Beside him, Lakshman’s breathing stopped too, his fluttering pupils slowing behind his eyelids, growing deathly still. 

Rama opened his eyes. They glowed icy blue, their inhuman light reflected off the curved glass of a lantern suspended from the thatched roof. 

Slowly, like a swan rising up from the surface of a lake, he got to his feet. On the floor, Lakshman resumed breathing with a harsh intake of breath. 

Rama went to the open doorway of the hut, stood limned against the faintly lighter darkness of the doorway a moment, then stepped outside. 

The ashram lay quietly asleep. At the far end of the sprawling compound, in the northernmost hut, brahmacharya acolytes tended the sacred yagna fire, keeping the chain of mantra recitation unbroken. Except for them, Siddh-ashrama was deserted and still, the rest of its hundred and six male occupants deeply asleep. They all dreamed the same shared nightmare that Lakshman was now dreaming. In an hour or two, the compound would swell with the noises of a hundred Brahmins, sadhus, rishis and brahmacharyas, going about the daily chores of a forest retreat. But for now, it may as will have been a graveyard. 

Not a soul saw Rama emerge from the southernmost hut, pause a moment as if listening to some unheard voice, then turn to walk away from the ashram, through the vegetable grove and bamboo thicket that lay behind; and then, several hundred yards later, enter the deep, forbidding Vatsa jungle. The darkness parted like black velvet folds, enveloping the slender form, then closed around him. No sign remained of his passing. 

In the hut, Lakshman’s breathing resumed a natural sleep pattern. His pupils began swirling behind closed lids again. He descended into the arms of familiar nightmares. 

She was waiting for him in the darkness beneath a peepal tree. Silvery moonlight shrouded her like an enormous gauze veil. Her hair and eyes were raven black, her skin the shade of chalk. She stood amongst the wild peepal tendrils, singing softly in the still, silent jungle. A pair of lions nuzzled at her hand, feeding docilely on the savouries she held in her palm. He looked closely and saw that they were tiny squirming beings, perhaps an inch high apiece. He could hear them screaming tinnily. She fed them into the whiskered mouths of the lions. The beasts licked spots of blood off her milky fair hands. 

She was naked, clothed only in the moonlight. There was something about that which disturbed him; it disturbed him more than the other things, but he could not understand why for several moments. Then it came to him: Holi purnima was eight nights ago. The moon couldn’t possibly be this bright and full tonight. It bothered him more than anything else about this dreamlike scenario. 

She raised her head, as if noticing him only now, and smiled. Her teeth were as white as the pearls gifted to his father last winter by southern fishermen, pearls gleaned from the depths of the Banglar ocean. They gleamed dangerously in the moonlight. The lions parted their jaws sleepily, mirroring her smile. Their fangs were flecked with blood. In the maw of one, Rama could see the half-chewed bodies of those little beings– what were they?–still wriggling feebly. The lion growled softly and snapped its jaws shut, jerking its head as it swallowed down the remnants. Her tongue was black as coal, Rama saw. Her teeth, despite their pearly whiteness, were jagged and misshapen. It was a terrible smile, filled with the dark promise of certain destruction. A smile foretelling the end of all creation.