The Ramayana (31 page)

Ravana sighed like the north wind on the mountaintop. His lips curled; fangs flashed at the corners of his mouths. He rose and crossed to his bay window, which looked out over the turquoise sea.

He said softly, “I will go to Janasthana myself to kill these brothers.”

“Oh no! Before you do anything in haste, listen to what I have heard about this Rama. He can hold up a river with his arrows. They say that if he wants he can extinguish the sun and the stars with his astras. He can raise the earth out of the sea, if it is submerged, or plunge it into the deeps by breaking the bounds of the world. All the rishis say that he is Vishnu come as a man. He shone like a God when he stood facing our army. He was a blue sun, and he killed fourteen thousand rakshasas as if they were small children before him.”

Akampana had been thinking feverishly on his way to Lanka, to save his skin as the bearer of the news he brought. Ravana was about to speak; but he saw the light of an idea in his rakshasa's eye.

“Finish what you were saying, Akampana.”

“It would be foolish, my lord, to engage Rama in a duel, for you could not be certain of the outcome. But there is another way.” He paused, and saw he had his master's interest. “Rama has a wife called Sita, who followed him into the forest. She is exquisite. He loves her more than his own life, and she, him; they are like prana to each other.”

Ravana's topmost head hissed, “So what? What are you trying to say?”

Surer of himself now, Akampana continued at his ease. “She is the most beautiful woman in the world, Ravana. The apsaras of Devaloka cannot compare with her. Her face is perfect; her body is a vision.”

“Say what you have to quickly, fool,” said the Monster of Lanka.

Akampana blurted, “If you were to abduct Sita and bring her here secretly, Rama would die pining for her!”

The nine heads mulled over this, whispering sibilantly among themselves. Then in surreal chorus, they grinned, horribly and all together. They bobbed up and down, endorsing Akampana's idea, delighted with it. Ravana's main face smiled, showing four rows of fangs. “I like your plan. Tomorrow at sunrise, I will fly to the Dandaka vana myself to bring Sita back to Lanka.”

Akampana bowed deeply and left the presence without turning his back on his Emperor. Ravana stood at his window for a long time, staring across sullen green waves. Then he turned back to his duties and pleasures of the day, and to his endless study. The Rakshasa was a profound scholar.

He retired early that night and he ordered no woman to come to him. He soon fell asleep, the eyes in all his heads shut fast.

*   *   *

The next morning, before the sun rose, Ravana sat in the strangest chariot. This ratha was made of gold, alloyed with a starry metal, and four horned mules were yoked to it. They were green creatures of sorcery and flew through the sky quick as thoughts, at their master's command.

When Ravana was ready, his chariot rose into the air. It hovered there, swathed in eerie luster, as the sun crept up behind the palace. The Demon raised a hand to wave to his rakshasas below. Next moment, the chariot vanished from sight.

Ravana flew across the sea of Bharatavarsha. He flashed across the plateau of the southern peninsula, over field and forest, mountain and river. He slowed his flying mules over a jungle below him that was his destination. He peered down to find the hermitage for which he was bound. Quite soon, he spotted Maricha's asrama: its wood fire's smoke curled into the sky. With a command that was just a potent thought, Ravana flew down smoothly as a bird and alighted in the glade where the rakshasa Maricha, now turned a rishi, sat in dhyana. It was the same Maricha whom Rama had once doused in the sea with the manavastra. Maricha was Ravana's uncle.

He gave a cry of welcome when he saw who had come to visit him. Quickly he laid out a darbhasana for the Emperor and set a bowl of fruit before him. Maricha was older than he, and Ravana paid proper, if somewhat hollow, obeisance to him before he settled into the grass throne.

Maricha blessed him and said, “What a pleasant surprise, nephew. Something important must bring you to my asrama. Tell me, what has happened?”

Ravana looked away from Maricha. He gazed at his humble hut; he gazed at the tree under which it was built, on which the wildflower garlands of worship hung. He took his time to begin, then said, “Uncle, did you know that all my rakshasas in Janasthana have been killed? Khara, Dushana, and all the rest. The entire army has been razed.” He drew a talon eloquently across his throat. “In a day.”

Maricha's eyes grew round. “How? When Khara led the army, how?”

Studying his dark, brutal hands, Ravana said quietly, “One man killed them all.” He paused. Then, rolling the words on his tongue as if to see if they would conjure any magic, he said slowly, “A kshatriya. A Rama.”

Maricha drew a sharp breath; his hair stood on end. He held up his hands and cried, “Don't say that name!”

Ignoring him, Ravana continued, “Obviously the human is powerful; such power is a threat to me.” He took up a blade of darbha grass and began to pick his fangs. “This Rama must be killed. But we think he is too dangerous to face in battle.”

Maricha, who had experience of Rama, nodded his head several times in assent.

Ravana continued, “We think his wife should be taken in secret to Lanka, without Rama knowing where she has gone. We know noble hearts like his; he will pine for her and die. Or he will think her dead and kill himself to join her in the next world. I need your help, Maricha.”

But Maricha gave a moan. To his surprise, Ravana saw the old rakshasa's hands shook and his face was filmed in a sweat of fear. Struggling to compose himself, Maricha cried, “Whoever set you on this course is your enemy and wants to see you dead. Is one of your advisers trying to kill you? You would be mad even to think of it. This same Rama once shot me a thousand yojanas into the sea; and you find no one else to abduct but Rama's wife!”

Maricha breathed heavily; his eyes bulged in anxiety. “Ravana, you are the Lord of all the rakshasas and someone is envious of you. He is trying to have you killed. Rama will finish you if you go near him. He is like a sleeping lion. Only a fool will thrust his head into the lion's jaws and then awaken him.

“You are my nephew. I am your well-wisher and I want nothing from you. Return to Lanka, to your women. Forget you ever heard the name Sita. Go, Ravana; don't invite your death to you.”

Ravana listened calmly. He was unmoved by the descriptions of Rama's prowess, unmoved even by Maricha's obvious fear. But he respected Maricha almost as a guru, and he had never heard him speak of anyone else as he did of Rama. Since there were such conflicting opinions about abducting Sita, he decided to let caution prevail.

Ravana said, “Very well, uncle; if you feel so strongly I will not take Sita. Though it rankles that a mere man treats us as this Rama has, and I have no fitting response for him. But no matter; there is no hurry. I am sure the chance will present itself one day, and I will crush this prince like an insect under my nail.”

All his heads glowered at the thought. Ravana flew back to Lanka in his mule chariot.

 

11. Surpanaka again

A few days later, a more relaxed Ravana sat on his crystal throne, worked also with huge pearls and blood-red corals from the sea. He had another visitor, who changed that Emperor's mind again.

For days after the slaughter of the rakshasas of Janasthana, Surpanaka lived alone in the deserted city. The ghosts of the dead haunted her, wailing at her for revenge: after all, it was in trying to avenge the injury to her that they had died. She spent those days and their nights as inside a nightmare. Over and over again she saw Rama's face. She saw his smoking astras, and she heard the screams of the rakshasas she had led to their deaths. She dared not sleep any more except when she fell into an exhausted swoon.

If one of her brothers had been with her, he would have told her the fault was not hers. But here she was, alone in the midst of the Dandaka vana, and every leaf that stirred in the breeze reminded her of her guilt. At last she could not bear it any longer, the hallucinatory loneliness, and the wounds where Lakshmana had cut off her ears and nose still smarted fiercely. They were ill healed, with no one to minister to them, since all her rakshasis had fled.

In despair, she decided to go to her brother in Lanka. She arrived with witchcraft, having flown limply over the sea.

*   *   *

Let no one who speaks of Ravana forget his greatness. True, he was evil, none as evil as him, but he was magnificent as well. In fact, such was the greatness of Ravana that no other king on any world could hold a candle to him.

He sat upon his throne like fire in a crystal shrine. He was a master not only of darkness, but also of knowledge, classical and hermetic. Ravana sat bare-bodied in his splendid court, and his mighty chest bore the circular scar where, once, Indra's elephant Airavata had gored him. Another emblazoned wound showed where Indra's vajra had burned him. But Ravana was not killed by tusk or thunderbolt, which no other warrior had ever survived. Indra had fled when the adamantine vajra came back to him without claiming the Demon's life.

Despite the inverted cluster of heads, and of these just the topmost was purely evil, Ravana was handsome, as rakshasas are, and manly. Women felt faint when they saw him. Of course, he never hesitated to take any woman who caught his fancy, regardless of whose wife, sister, or daughter she was. What Ravana wanted, he invariably had.

He was a master of astras, and a favorite of Siva's. He had a boon of unequaled strength and a sword of power from Siva; with these he had established dominion over the three worlds.

On his way to the triune sovereignty, he had descended into the Patalas and vanquished Vasuki, Emperor of the nagas. He had then quelled his own half-brother, Kubera, Master of treasures upon the mountain, for lordship over the earth. The Rakshasa wreaked havoc in Kubera's pleasure garden, the Chaitra, molesting his yaksha women and plundering as much gold and as many jewels as he liked. From Kubera, Ravana also took the incomparable pushpaka vimana. This was not the mule chariot, but a wonderful ship of the firmament.

Finally, he attacked Indra in Devaloka and defeated the Ones of light. They also now paid him tribute: wealth and horses, elephants and women. The elemental Gods were his vassals. The sun shone softly for him, the moon never waned over his island. The wind blew gently on Lanka and the sea never dared rise there, for fear of Ravana.

But the Rakshasa had his greatest blessing from his grandsire Brahma: that he could not be killed by a Deva of the sky, a gandharva, a charana, Asura, Daitya, Danava, pisacha, rakshasa; or by any among the immortal races of darkness or light. But thinking them too puny, he had not asked for invincibility against mortal men. After all, he was Ravana, who had once lifted Kailasa in his hands to please Lord Siva. Holding the mountain aloft, accompanying himself on the vina, he sang the Sama Veda as no one had sung it before.

One should never discount the majesty of Ravana of Lanka. Evil he was, but he was also the greatest of all the created beings of his time. He had dominated the known universe for centuries, and even Deva women felt weak with desire just to see him. He was matchless at arms, in his generosity, in his intelligence and knowledge of the sacred lore, and in his indomitable courage. He was Ravana, the peerless, the invincible. There was no one like him, as complex, as powerful, or as wise, save the great Gods of the Trinity themselves. But let us not forget he was evil as well: a Beast of the night.

*   *   *

Ravana hardly recognized his sister when she stood fuming before him. She had no nose or ears, and her face was so much older. Her hair had turned gray in a week; her voice was different, sadder. If he knew her by anything, it was by the fire in her eyes. She stood with her hands on her hips, glowering at her brother.

She said shrilly, “You call yourself an emperor. You say Indra is your vassal. But you are only an emperor of your harem, since you don't seem to know anything that goes on beyond its doors. Ravana, you have grown arrogant and complacent. Janasthana is razed, everyone who lived there is a moldering corpse; and you sit here indulging yourself. Rakshasa, you are not fit to rule!”

Ravana said nothing. He let her vent her anger. She cried, “Do you know, O Emperor, what force razed the might of Janasthana as if it never existed? A man: one man, a Rama.”

Ravana said quietly, “Tell me about him.”

Surpanaka thought bitterly about the prince, his dark face and his mocking smile. Yet her expression grew wistful when she remembered him.

She sighed, “He is the son of King Dasaratha, who sent him to the Dandaka vana. His arms are long and so are his eyes. He is as handsome as Kama Deva. He wears valkala, and his hair piled above his beautiful face in jata. He wielded a bow that was not made in this world. He shot astras called narachas that burned our soldiers to ashes.

“I did not see him bend his bow or draw back its string. I only saw his arrows scorch the sky in a livid storm. And fourteen thousand rakshasas were cut down in a muhurta and a half. Khara was among those fourteen thousand, and Dushana and Trisiras. It was no army of weaklings that Rama wilted as if it were a field of green plants.

“He let me escape because I am a woman; but look what his brother did to me. Lakshmana is just a fair version of him; he is as powerful as Rama. I could tell by the weapons he carried and the speed with which he ruined my face. They are not just two men when they fight; they are two armies by themselves.”

Another memory stirred in her. Her eyes glittered more than ever. “With them, also, is Rama's wife, Sita. She is Janaka of Videha's daughter and, oh, she is beautiful. Her hair hangs below her waist. Her nose is fine, and her body is lissom and perfect. Her skin is golden and I have never seen another woman like her. Hers is the beauty by which all other beauty may be measured.