RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (75 page)

“And a bitter one it was,” Shatrugan said. 

They turned their horses and rode back the way they had come. 

***

Luv and Kush ran to their mother, embracing her fiercely. Sita gasped, her wounds still fresh, but smiled through her pain as she embraced her sons, tears spilling from her dark-underscored eyes. 

“My sons,” she said. “What have you done?”

They looked up at her. “What we had to, Maatr. They left us no choice.”

Behind them, Bejoo and Somasra both nodded, supporting the boys. Nakhudi and the other survivors of the ashram massacre as well as the bear-killers who had been protecting them, heard details of the battle from various members of Bejoo’s group and marveled. 

Maharishi Valmiki rose to his feet wearily, leaning on his staff. The great guru had aged another decade that day itself. “Time to return home,” he said. 

TEN

The thunder of hooves and chariot wheels overcame the crackling of the chandan wood as the cremation pyres consumed the dead. The royal chariot was preceded by PFs in their familiar purple and black uniforms, the original and true king’s guard. The ashramites who were clustered around the cremation pyres with Maharishi Valmiki at their head looked up with hostility as Rama and Lakshman dismounted. 

Sita was standing with her sons before her. At the sound of the approaching hooves, they had immediately wanted to take up their bows but she had stopped them, indicating the pyres. It would be disrespectful to leave the ritual half-done. They subsided but still kept their eyes on the pathway down which the intruders arrived. The instant they saw the soldiers with spears and swords, their backs tightened and it was only their mother’s hands, firmly squeezing each boy’s shoulder, that kept them from racing for their bows and rigs. 

Rama’s eyes met Sita’s as he approached. He was raising his palms in a gesture of supplication at that instant and it appeared as if he were greeting her first and foremost, the pain in his eyes speaking volumes. Sita tried to glare daggers at him but for some reason, the very sight of him melted her heart.
How tired he looks, how much he has aged, he looks ten years older than his age, why has he become so thin, so drawn…Does he not get enough sleep?
Instead of anger and hostility, these were the thoughts that came to her mind in that crucial moment. The heart’s capacity to love always exceeds its capacity to hate. Anger fades in time, genuine affection stays bright forever.  

He held her gaze a moment, then moved on to Maharishi Valmiki. He bowed to the Maharishi, offering the appropriate greetings and gestures. 

“Forgive my intrusion, mahadev,” he said. “I do not mean to disturb you at your time of grief but my business here is urgent.”

Maharishi Valmiki finished the last part of the cremation ritual without comment. When all was done and the pyres had almost completely consumed the bodies, he turned his tired face to Rama. There was no space left for anger or recrimination in his heart. When he spoke, it was with sadness and regret, not out of a desire to apportion blame. “You know that this was the work of men deputed by you, under your own authority?”

Rama bowed his head in shame. “I regret that these lives were lost. I am told the men responsible have been killed as they deserve to have been killed.” His eyes searched for and found the two boys standing before Sita like proud cubs defending their mother lioness. “I have heard the entire tale of the battle of the arrows and seen the results with my own eyes.” He turned and indicated Bharat and Shatrugan who stepped forward to greet the Maharishi as well. Valmiki acknowledged them all. 

“And now what business brings you here?” asked the guru. “How have your feet found the way to my ashram after these many years?”

Rama looked at the face of his old face and fellow exile, the man he had once known as Ratnakaran and whom he had once fought against when he was known as Bearkiller. Valmiki’s mangled face, ruined by the claws of a bear in youth, was mostly covered by his flowing white beard now, and the intense hatred in his eyes had been replaced by an enduring sadness and deep philosophical acceptance of the way of the world, but beneath all that great store of learning and acquired wisdom there was still the core of the man whom Rama had once stood shoulder to shoulder with in a jungle called Janasthana, battling against impossible foes and unbeatable odds—and winning. 

“I feel as if I have been asleep these many years and have only awoken today. As if the cobwebs of a decade have been washed away and my eyesight cleared suddenly.”

Valmiki considered this a moment. “And how did this sudden change come about?”

“A great resonance sounded in the world this day, shaking me out of my slumber,” Rama said. “It was someone using dev-astras in the service of dharma.” He turned and looked directly at Luv and Kush. “The shakti of brahman cascading through creation cleansed my soul of all confusion and doubt. I was as a man refreshed by a cold wave that falls upon him unexpectedly. I remembered things I had not even thought about for years. I saw the mistakes I had made and desired to correct them. I saw the error of my ways and sought to redress those errors. But most of all, I saw the unjustness I had meted out to a loved one and knew I must act quickly and do what was right.”

“And what exactly does doing right mean?” Valmiki asked. 

Rama’s eyes found Sita, standing proud yet tragic in the stillness of the evening. In the trees above, birds cried out and called as the day approached an end. 

“I intend to beg my wife’s forgiveness and take her and our sons home, if she will agree to come,” he said. 

Sita’s knees buckled. Both her sons looked up in alarm as they felt her weight shift, and they caught her arms tightly, holding her up. She regained control of herself and nodded to them. Still, they remained alert in case she should lurch again. 

Maharishi Valmiki looked at Sita. “What say you, Lady Vedavati? Do you think Lord Rama Chandra deserves forgiveness?” 

She looked at the guru, avoiding Rama’s gaze for the moment. “I cannot say if he does or does not deserve it. I will not judge him. I
cannot
judge him. I can only speak for myself.”

“Then will you or will you not forgive him?” the maharishi asked gently. 

Sita was silent a long moment. Everyone gathered around waited as well. Luv and Kush looked up at her face, holding her hands tightly. 

“I will,” she said at last. 

A great cheering rose from the ranks of the Ayodhyan army. Word had spread through the army of all that had transpired that day and everyone knew that Rama had found his long-exiled wife and sons. To the masses, it meant that Ayodhya had found her queen. After the threat of war hanging over their heads and the likelihood of war against their neighboring kingdom of Videha no less, it was a treat to see their liege’s martial obsession diverted into a more gentle preoccupation. Kings who loved were easier to love than kings who warred. 

The expression on Rama’s face as well as Sita’s showed nothing but love. 

A white-cloaked figure strode forward with a stern face. Pradhan Mantri Jabali gestured at his king. “Samrat Rama Chandra, you cannot simply take her back.”

Rama shot Jabali a cursory glance. “I can do as I please. She is still my wife.”

“She is an exile. And she was exiled for good reason. Her secret kinship to Ravana, lord of Lanka, and the fact that it was kept hidden from us for so long, endangering not just our kingdom but all mortalkind, is partly the reason. But there is also the matter of her purity.”

“Purity?” spat Nakhudi, stepping forward angrily. “You speak of purity? How pure are you? How pure is any man? Why do men only speak of purity when it comes to their women!”

Jabali gestured dismissively at Nakhudi, ignoring her outburst. “As a husband, you may do as you please. But as king of Ayodhya, you must also uphold dharma. And dharma demands that any woman you choose to instate as Queen of Kosala should prove herself worthy of that position and respect. You cannot expect your people to respect you if they do not respect your wife.”

“Why should they not respect her?” Rama asked, forehead creased but his tone not angry, not yet. 

“For the same reason that any husband hesitates to respect his wife if she stays for even one night under another man’s roof.” Jabali pointed accusingly at Sita. Luv and Kush glared angrily back at him. “Your wife was abducted by Ravana and stayed for months under his control.”

“Yes,” Rama admitted, “but we learned later that he was her father by birth.”

“That is irrelevant to the question of purity. Who knew what transpired with her during the time she was incarcerated in Lanka? A den of demons, lair of rakshasas and all manner of vile asuras.”

Rama’s face hardened. “She underwent the agni-pariksha as was required by our customs. She passed the test of fire successfully.”

Jabali shook his head. “The error you made, if I may call it that, was in holding the agni-parikhsha without any witnesses present.”

“There were witnesses by the millions,” Lakshman countered, stepping forward. He gestured at Hanuman, standing to one side quietly, watching the debate with his arms folded over his greying chest. “Our friend Hanuman was there. As were the entire vanar nations and rksaa nations.”

Jabali’s face twitched in a half-smile. “I meant civilized witnesses. Aryas. The noble folk. Not monkeys and bears!”

Hanuman bristled at the tone of derision but made no comment or move. After a decade spent with mortals he had probably become inured to their racist epithets although it was evident that he did not appreciate them. 

“Then take my word for it,” Rama said. “And my brother’s. We were there. We witnessed her succeed in the agni-pariksha.”

“And what of the past ten years?” Jabali asked slyly. “Once again she has been away from your house, who knows where or with whom?”

Rama had no answer to that. Even Lakshman was silent. Bharat and Shatrugan looked on angrily but said nothing because they could not offer anything worthwhile in such a matter. It was Maharishi Valmiki who spoke up then. 

“I will vouch personally for the reputation of Lady Vedavati whom you know as Queen Sita,” Valmiki said. “Her honor is spotless.”

Jabali laughed harshly. “We cannot take your word for it, Maharishi. The people must be appeased. And the people are not easily appeased. They have been betrayed too often. The conniving late Queen Kaikeyi, the scheming asura-worshipping Daiimaa Manthara, the intrusions into Ayodhya, the near-invasion by Ravana’s son Atikiya. Jabali spread his arms, affecting a guileless expression. “It is not I who questions the authenticity, Samrat Rama. It is the people. They would need to see it with their own eyes in order to be certain.”

“See it?” Lakshman asked angrily. “Do you mean we should hold another agni-parikhsa just to appease the people’s doubts?”

Jabali shrugged. “If she is truly innocent of wrongdoing and pure as you claim, there is nothing to fear. Besides, it is not I who demands this test, it is dharma.”

“Dharma!” shouted Nakhudi scornfully. “You change your interpretation of dharma to suit your own interests!”

Jabali wagged a finger of warning at the oversized woman warrior. “Mind your tongue, woman. Otherwise you may well be compelled to undergo an agni-pariksha as well.”

“Enough!” Rama said angrily. “If this is the only way, then it must be done.”

He looked at Sita. “I know you are spotless and beyond reproach but what Pradhan Mantri Jabali says is true, a king serves his people and the people will talk. We set very high standards of morality in Ayodhya and in order to enforce those standards I must prove that my family and I abide by them as well. Nobody must have the right to raise a finger and say a single word about you or anyone else in our house once you return home. Therefore I ask you to do this, not for my sake or even for your own sake, but for the sake of the people we serve. For the sake of dharma. Do this one last thing and we shall be together again, forever.”

Sita looked at him sadly. “I thought you might have changed after all. I thought you genuinely meant it when you begged my forgiveness, that you sincerely wished to undo your mistakes and do the right thing at last. I kept my love preserved like an acorn in a bushel for ten long years, in the hope that someday perhaps we might be reunited, that someday you would see the light of reason. But today I realize that it is not possible. You never truly desired forgiveness. You were never sincere in your proffer. You did not ask with genuine intention. All you desired was a queen, not a wife. A figurehead to place on the throne beside you, like the stone statue of me your army carries before it. A pure, perfect idol of a woman. Not a woman herself.”

“Sitey,” Rama said, “you misunderstand me entirely. I came here to ask you to come back. But I live in the service of my station. A king serves the people. Yatha raja tatha praja.”

“
‘As does the king, so do the people,’
” Sita translated. “So do it. Show the people that you believe in my fealty. That you do not need a fire sacrifice to prove my…
purity
! Do this and prove to them that to doubt an honest woman is itself a stain on her reputation. To point a finger is itself a sullying of honor. To gossip and speak about someone without their being found guilty of any wrongdoing is itself a crime. Deny this unfair demand and prove to your people that dharma comes from conviction not compromise. Dharma breaks but does not bend. Dharma is the same for men as well as women. Do this and show the praja that you are truly a raja of dharma. Not merely a servant but a king of dharma. Do this, Rama. Do this for the sake of all mortalkind for you are as close to a god as it is possible for a man to be. Do this one thing and you shall be pure yourself, unsullied, and undoubted by history for all time to come. The eyes of countless generations watch you now. You are the one being judged, not I. Do this and prove to all humanity forever that Rama, King of Dharma, can pass this final agni-pariksha. The test of trust. Prove that you believe without question in my so-called
purity
and need no superstitious ritual to confirm it for the naysayers and doubters of the world.”