by Daljit Nagra
Jatayu then tried attacking the lions
so they would turn back
but snakes from dark creeps
in the chariot stabbed outwards
repelling the shocked old vulture.
Jatayu pleaded again and was ignored again.
Only then did he dare attack Raavana with beak and claws –
he cut into Raavana.
Mortified, yet still Raavana would rather injure
than kill this valorous bird
so he feebled Jatayu with a punch.
Jatayu flew back at Raavana
but the latter finally saw red-mist!!!
With a Chandrahasa, his precious sword,
two smotes tattered Jatayu’s beautiful old wings.
It’s said that every bird
from as far here to the outer-midst
for a spell fell silent
when it was struck by Jatayu’s soaring
pain note, by his crystal-cut pure cry-note
that suffered disintegration
soon as the Chandrahasa
gaped his throat.
Raavana’s amphibian car streaked the airy pathways –
he felt bad
witnessing the bravest all-time raja of birds
and friend to all in all kingdoms
dumped between banyans as so much trash.
Book Fourth: You Hot Monkey!
CHAPTER ONE: HOLE BLOCK BLEEDING BLUNDER
CHAPTER TWO: THE LOVE PACT
CHAPTER THREE: RAMA
CHAPTER FOUR: MONSOON CAUSING UP TO NO GOOD
CHAPTER FIVE: NOT SO BY THIRUVENGADAM
CHAPTER SIX: IN BIRD BRAIN
CHAPTER SEVEN.ONE: JAWMAN
CHAPTER SEVEN.TWO: THE SEX THREAT
CHAPTER SEVEN.THREE: THE DEATH THREAT
CHAPTER SEVEN.FOUR: YOU SHOT-HOT MONKEY!
CHAPTER EIGHT: EMERGENCY RAKSASSY JAW JAW
CHAPTER NINE: MADU MADYA HONEY-POT HAIRDOWN DAY!
CHAPTER TEN: CALLING ALL MONKEYS HERE NOW PLEASE!
CHAPTER ELEVEN: BY NALA TO LANKA
Chapter One: Hole Block Bleeding Blunder
Sugreeva, a monkey, recalls two buffaloes and then his own brother, Bali.
‘There was once a buffalo gang, their leader, Toraapa
was a shocking white beast:
one day he must have lost his mind, ho …
Toraapa started horning to death all males in his tribe!
He was soon butchering the whole male gang
so he was the sole bull among his cow wives.
One Toraapa wife was pregnant and thinking:
What if I bloating a boy, Mmwwohh!?
Toraapa will horn him.
She fled for a cave
and gave birth to a fulsome black buffalo she named Toraapi.
She fed Toraapi her milk
soured with tales
about his father’s death spree.
Toraapi hatched only hatred for his dad,
he daily sharpened his horns and at night
he came down yonder
measuring his hooves against his father’s hooves.
When Toraapi’s hooves were big as Toraapa’s hooves
he came down the mountain. And what did he do?
He first of all started gorging his sex appetite
by bursting his pent bull-hood
on his dad’s wives!
Toraapi mated with each Toraapa cow
even his own sweet mummy-ji!
Powering across the land, massed with his polluted wives,
the father, Toraapa, brimming in his whiteness
called out monster-voiced,
“What bull dare soil my wives, Mmwwohh!?”
Leaking creams and red-eyed,
Toraapi burst his spunky voice, “It was I, yourrrrr
sson! These all are now become my wiiives!!!”
The father, hopping with rage, burst dry earth.
Then stamped his hooves and charged at the son
but the son wiggled aside: hornswoggler! Dainty boy.
Turning about, Toraapa charged at the boy again.
Again, dainty boy.
This tarupping charging
back and hard and hard again
till sundown ended
when the dad getting dizzied.
Only then Toraapi fighting fair –
his rock-sharpened pike horns
he horned into the dad guts!
Toraapa was burst – flooding into his death.
Toraapi then becomes big buffalo boss?
No-no, said the gods
sickened by Toraapi’s toppling of the father.
They said he must fight his match, a monkey,
known as Bali, to prove his right to be a ruler.
So up stepped bad-black Toraapi
to unsettle our monkey kingdom.
Bali was ready, “Oho buffalo!
Feel this right arm strength. This fist alone
will crumble your lungs, ho!” “I am Toraapi!
Mmmwwwohhhh!!!
Feel my hoof spur!
I burst a father who fought Sea and made it cry out
as spray.
Meet your Dead-God.”
Bali, who was used to cracking off
mountain peaks and tossing them about like nits,
grappled with Toraapi.
Toraapi dainty: Bali brisk. One was flung up:
one flopped backwards. Reiterative deadlocking.
Bali addressed Toraapi,
“These fields are too loose for a full fight.
Come to a cave-yard where you see my gusto, ho!”
Toraapi must have feared that if Bali faced
defeat he may escape by flying across the trees
so he gladly followed through a hole
to a cramped cave aside the ocean.
Bali told me, “Hang about by this hole, youngster,
so I can return this way once I’ve killed him, yo.”
I kept my feet at the hole for many moons,
then one dawn
streaming across the watery surface:
pale-red blood, the colour of monkey blood.
Bali must be dead, I thought. God bless Bali.
Our monkey advisers made me, as Bali’s younger bro,
the king: King Sugreeva!
As Bali was dead, my army blocked the hole
with a mountain pushed over it to keep out Toraapi.
BUT, Bali was not dead, ho! He’d finally killed Toraapi
because Toraapi hadn’t seen the cave-space
was too small
for him to charge.
Bali was all over the hulking buffalo
and killed him by cracking off a Toraapi horn
then piercing him in the guts with it.
So why, you must be thinking, was Toraapi’s
blood pale-red as monkey blood?
At Toraapi’s death, the gods had showered Bali
with flowers:
pollen and petals must have mixed-in with Toraapi’s blood
to make it pale-red as it spread in the ocean.
Bali tried returning up the hole
to be dancing his victory dance – hole blocked.
Bali must have thought that I blocked the hole
to kill him, ho!
So Bali ripped Toraapi’s mighty head off
and threw it so hard at the blocked hole
that the hole shattered into daylight. What a monkey.
Then seeing me on the throne as the new king
must have proved my cunning. Bali rushed at me
slapping me wildly. Not a word could I blurt.
“Entomb me? Coward bro!” he kept saying
as he kept slapping me. I only got free from the snappy
slaps when I made it to Matanga.’
Chapter Two: The Love Pact
Rama meets Sugreeva.
Burgeoned brooding primordial buffoonish trees
husking their mushroomy
honk about the free-drifting
vales and hills –
the free-drifting vales and hills
cooped with paranormal
beings and goofy beasts.
Rama and Lakshmana trudged diligent there,
certain that Sita was taken by Soorpanaka and her ilk.
Rama remained shocked at his own shocked state
on returning to the cottage, after battle,
and not finding Sita indoors.
He had madly dashed from ant to bird to deer to ravine
crawling for news about Sita
and had stooped before banana, custard apple and bright
star clusters
then fallen before the chakravaka birds that sleep alone
but they just sealed their eyes
self-cuddling
on lotus beds.
Then he’d pleaded with Godavari river
but of course Godavari kept schtum
fearing Raavana
and watched instead Rama
hurling himself deep into feeble heart-breaking begging.
And now what chance landing upon his moiety,
his heart’s half somewhere in this wilderness?
Walking foot-sore weeks and weakening
and scarce trained by Sage Viswamithra
for zooming upon a captured fellow …
Novices travelling hopelessly south
seeking support for recovering a noble lady.
Novices are in utter distress.
Help please, urgently for two
who have now fallen asleep beneath a tamarind tree.
As it happens, above, on a branch sat a monkey
who saw the brothers holding hands in their sleep
united like the nail and the quick.
Such brotherly affection
drew tears from the monkey for his own brotherly rift.
The tears hit Rama on the cheeks and woke him.
Rama lectured his brother against crying
and only stopped when he heard from overhead,
‘It is me
who is crying for loss of his brother’s love.
I am an exiled king. I am requiring justice.
You do not seem to be sent by my brother, to kill me, ho.’
The brothers made acquaintance with Sugreeva.
Repasting with the exiled king and his army, they heard
Sugreeva’s tale that ended thus,
‘And here in Mount Matanga I idle about safely.
Bali is cursed by Sage Matanga
that if he step into these precincts his skull
will shatter most fragmentatiously!
In the meanwhile, my brother has reclaimed the throne
and also he is bagging for his rampant pleasure
my wife, my Ruma.’
Rama was hooked by Sugreeva’s grief,
‘That scandalous abductor of your queen.
My own loss shows it’s a looty-mark on my name.
I must become a brother to your cause, but how?’
Sugreeva replied, ‘Ho Rama,
can you beat Bali?’
To test Rama they went where seven trees stood in a row.
Mountainous trees surviving four dissolutions of the universe.
Their branches swept so high they flopped into the heavens.
Measureless seemed the span from the base to the crown.
Said Sugreeva, ‘Bali can shake this leafy tree leaving it
leafless, blank.
Bali’s body absorbs half the strength of the enemy he kills
so his power is rare, ho!
These days, Bali’s chest, when he is fighting, becomes thick
as one of these trees?
Can your arrows even pierce …?’
Rama’s response: focus. He twanged his bow
whose resonance echoed through hills and valleys.
Then Rama shot an arrow BUT not
through just one tree. Rama’s arrow went through
tree two tree three
tree four and so on till it shot through
all seven trees in a row
BUT not only that
it carried on through the seven ooperworlds
AND not only that
it carried on through the seven seas
and through all things in seven
before retiring to its nesting point in Rama’s quiver!
All who had seen Rama’s arrow-miracle bowed.
‘Is more than my wildest surmise. I beg forgiveness.
You are truly the saviour who can be ridding Bali.
A while ago we saw Raavana
flying with a woman.’
Rama near swooned at how smirched he must appear
to have lost his wife. He became withdrawn awhile.
‘Surely it must be your wife, hey.
Once we have removed Bali, I pledge
to summon a monkey army for your cause.’
Chapter Three: RAMA
Sugreeva and Bali fight for their right to the monkey throne.
Sugreeva’s roar shot brazen over the mountains.
Bali bounced back a roar from his cave bed
as his eyes spat fire and he ground his teeth,
‘Wahay, wahay, wait up, youngster!’
Bali’s wife, the moonlike Tara, cautioning,
‘Ho, he would not be putting a foot your way.
He may be inspirited by the power of this Rama human,
talk is spreading about this invincible archer …’
‘My cracking wife, your voice is nightingale
-ish
and your style is peacockian
but you ladies tell-tale bicker-snicker.
I hear Rama wears Truth’s crown.
Could such a man, who sacrificed his right to the throne
upon a kid brother, could he meddle between brothers
by siding with one, with my sly brother, yo?’
‘Sugreeva is still your blood, ho.
Is he not younger?
Besides, who does not deserve a hearing?’
Afraid to push the matter further,
Tara stood back
as Bali seemingly expanded his frame in battle punch lust.
From behind a rock,
Rama saw this giant
and whispered, ‘Lak-
shmana, is there any
rival body-spectacular
in the world?’
Lakshmana now
had misgivings,
‘Is Sugreeva trying
to involve you
in more than a
common rift
between monkeys?
Of the brothers, who
is correct here?’
‘Do you not think
brotherly strife
can be pinned
on all species?’
‘We are keshatriya
who stand in the op
-en …’
Silence. The monkeys slapped their broadened chests
and grappled.
The balls of their feet clashed,
emitted sparks, sparks gobbed from their eyes
but Bali was soon smashing up his wee brother.
Smashing him up till
Rama drew an arrow
then out from behind his hiding place he shot it hard.
Like a needle passing though ripe papaya
the arrow sped thoroughly through Bali’s back.
Bali was struck,
‘Who, moulded by earth bend me wriggling dying?
Who cowardly nail my meat, so hard, hey?’
Bali was now spilling blood from his prodigious heart.
Dying to perceive his killer
with one inordinate shakti
he roared his fingers back into his own torn juicy depths
with all his might
he screamed
yanking out through his own front – the arrow!
> Dead-God, Yama, gawped at Bali with crazy awe.
Gods generally applauded brave Bali.
Bali almost fainting, read the name on the arrow
and double-checked the name in shock
and again.
RAMA
The shock of defeat and death was nothing to Bali
against the spiritual shock
that this demon-foe was become his foe.
To himself: so my wife, my Tara, was right …
How could I be so uppity, hey …?
Rousing his final terms, Bali said,
‘O Rama, lord of
culture, justice and conduct –
have you kicked into dust your own codes?
Who’ll now wear Virtue’s badge? You chuck it lightly
by slaughtering the head of a monkey clan.
I was revering you, hey.’
Rama, who had come out from behind his rock,
‘In your hot-blood you have shown little respect
for your brother’s virtues. He protected the throne
but you slapped him about for it.’
‘What is this judgement, hey? When two parties
are in dispute how can you befriend one
