by Daljit Nagra
can reach Lanka, Hanuman. So wealthy in wisdom and might,
yet Hanuman, why do you tarry?’
But Hanuman looked back
like one who is wading through the cloths of night
and to himself
has become a benighted cloth he cannot unfold from.
‘Hanuman, to your own self it seems
you are lost …
Hanuman, who you truly are
I will find him for you now.
Hanuman, your backbone is made from a jewelled club,
your body moulded from a trident. Hanuman, your head
was chiselled from a diamond discus. Hanuman, your father
is Wind-God
and he placed that club, that diamond and that discus
in your mother’s mouth. Greatly against her will.
Thirty swarthy months past
and Hanuman, against natural curving-time
you coalesced into a baby
issuing from your mother’s
mouth.
Child when you were
you could leap up high.
Red like a twilight was something shimmering in the west
and you thought it must be a rare fruit: one day,
you leapt to pluck it.
Hanuman you leapt
over 300 yojanas
and you headed for the sun!
Not so impressed was Indra.
He smacked you with a thunderbolt
and to a mountain peak
you fell.
Your jaw was broken. Even your name
comes from this event, Hanu means jaw. You are Jawman.
Brahma felt bad for you – your bite was weak.
Brahma compensated you by making you invincible in battle.
Brahma gave you freedom from the jaws of Death,
though Death – only you can choose when you seek him.
Hanuman, only you so tired of life
will choose the way you die.
Hanuman, only you if you tire of life
will choose when you die.
So threatened by your new powers was your father,
that as your father he was able to lay a curse on you.
He cursed you so your own powers you would never know.
That curse, I have powers to repeal.
You are the son and heir of Wind-God
and earning his power and glory is your birth right.’
Hanuman’s heart surged at the bulletin.
Whilst Jambavan performed the service
Hanuman swung his tail and with each bow-shape of his tail
the army watched Hanuman making his mark in the world!
Jambavan calling the while,
‘Arise Hanuman and keep arising. You are our saviour!
Hanuman, you are taller than any monkey.
Hanuman, but you can rise to any stature.
You can grow so big, Hanuman,
bigger even than Vishnu
when he strode through the stars
dunking down into hell
the demon Mahabali …’
Hardly was Jambavan being heard
for Hanuman’s head, Hanuman’s stonking simian bonce
was bigger than each bosomy cloud
each Hanuman caress-breath
causing a floccus
a gasping of hie!hie!
that drizzled
each cloud into Hanumanian creams …
The army bowed to their massive darn hard leader
who was already beating against the heat
hot-trotting his monkey power through the murky ocean!
Chapter Seven.two: The Sex Threat
Hanuman inspects Lanka and searches for Sita.
Now watch this for astute monkey machinations.
Hanuman in Lanka, fly-size, exploring the capital.
He recorded information about the golden gateways
and dazzling dark buildings that seemed, at their height
hovering in air.
He noted how Lanka was divided into four complex quarters
by wide roads and multi-storied mansions.
Each quarter was heavily guarded by raksassy armies
geared for a gory good ruck.
He watched raksassy going about their business
wearing varied looks and all seemed to, snug-like, fit in,
from the full-bodied beauteous type to the odd ilk.
The odd ilk walked around bazaars and along rivers,
some were dwarfish and held hands with a monster-
shadow sized fellow that had a single
eye or ear,
some were lying in the open with piping necks
and were snogging those with knots and braids
for dark and wan skin,
some with every bodily pore
hair-crammed were being tickled by a lover with a jackal’s
jaw and nose,
some with faces of boars were dancing
with some who had faces of buffalo,
some with goat or dog head
sang to their lover who had lions’ lips and horses’ brows,
some with feet of cows were carrying
the lover who had feet of mules
and all lay or walked or danced or sang freely
under the Lord’s happy sun …
Hanuman flew away from the bright light
and approached Raavana’s palace with its prodigious
palace moat.
The moat-waters were whipped by a local wind
so they circled with a sea power, all the while
inhabited by sharks and serpents.
Flying over the moat, as serpents lunged up
to gulp a monkey snack, Hanuman went indoors
into Raavana’s palace
which resembled Indra’s Amaravati.
The palace alone was 100 yojanas long and as wide,
a bamboozling city in itself with winding staircases
leading underground to endless chambers
and further down bunkers
and from ground-level rising up to the heavens
each floor was a web of narrow walkways and rooms
and intricate hidden chambers and trapdoors.
Hanuman went down one convolution
and spied Raavana’s ditched brides
all downcast along winding staircases
and in narrow anterooms and further down in bunkers.
The ditched brides were being fanned by fit young attendants
ready for the gigolo action
save that the wives still sought the top dog!
Hanuman flew through a hall
and all about so many raksassy ladies sleeping
on the patterned rugs and flashing their sand-dune buttocks:
some semi but most, most definitely, unclad
save for the odd cat’s-eye gem about the neck.
Many wore pearl necklaces that were like white water-birds
rising and falling between their breasts. Lascivious
carnival met Hanuman
who watched ladies sleeping atop each other’s breast
or caught in a thigh; so many unmarried ladies
surrendered to Raavana’s hard party calamity!
Hanuman was ever the thinker when it was most required.
And here he was thinking
how it is the mind which makes the senses perform
good or bad deeds.
The digressive mind become dissolute
must become subject to flesh:
whilst the flesh hoots and toots the mind is left wafting itself.
Yet I feel my mind, he wondered, must be well-ordered
enough
for as I look at beauty, unparallel’d willy-nillying
naked, up-for-nooky, on the floor, I can master my lust;
my mind feels bound to duty and thus to purity;
it can observe these ladies
without treacherous
quickie lust.
Thus he flew into Raavana’s bedroom
fearing to sight the cynosure of beauty, Sita.
He saw a statue of Lakshmi and there beneath
banking the room
the lord, in his incomparably magnificent crystal bed, asleep.
Hanuman flying close to admire
battle scars from centuries past:
great famed wounds
from Airavata’s tusks and Vishnu’s discus
and his shoulders
scored with Indra’s thunderbolts.
Hanuman gawped at the arms rounded as iron clubs,
the fingers perfectly chiselled and enamelled
so each twenty hands looked a five-hooded snake.
Hanuman remembered his own mission to locate Sita
so it’s paramount to avoid being detected,
he thought about how ambassadors
who fail to keep to the article of orders –
surely they betray their master’s cause.
Just then Raavana began to steam
and rolled around in his silken sheets.
The beauteous rough-haired lady at his side,
could it be Sita? The lady woke up the lord
who was tossing and turning in his sleep.
Hanuman was a speck atop a chandelier, hearing,
‘You know Lord, you have my permission
to end this pained tossing I see you stewing yourself each night
in.’
‘Ah, Mandodari, my dear wife, what is it you mean?’
‘Take Sita against her will. Why seek her permission?’
Raavana leapt from bed,
‘I must be at her now.’
Chapter Seven.three: The Death Threat
Raavana meets Sita during the night.
The lord’s sea heaving,
the lord alighting from his crystal chariot.
His torch bearers had woken Sita but she had refused
the seat in her pavilion.
His attendants set before her stunning jewels.
From the moon’s horribly lit-up response
she knew they were rare godly things
but did not look upon them.
Hanuman was floating, above a Simsapa tree,
on a moonbeam
for he had at last sighted Sita. He wondered to himself,
how if Rama should dry the ocean
and starve earth
for such a prize as Sita it may be worth the while …
The lord’s grottos, orchards and pleasure gardens
seemed washed in indigo.
The lord appreciated scale,
small-scale Lanka
where he wuthered
in heavenly made
summers
and now at night
whilst constellations held overhead
he relaxed in the evening breath,
relaxed in Sita’s breath …
He was all concentration.
His dazzling copper eyes watched her.
His teeth, white as the moon, glinted.
He appeared to be soaking up
Sita’s heartbeat.
He was crepuscular: between desire and despair.
Only the wings of his nostrils
elevating
basking
inhaling the essence of woman, pure woman …
‘Brahma, my grandfather, never created beauty
as you are beauty. I have flown upon his finest works.
Not even Ahalya …
Your earthly coloured golds and browns are a perfection,
near an offence to aspect.
Even your bare feet, their tan ripening skin alone
blinds me, beheads me.
But how sad it becomes you sitting on this green verge,
in bark-skin.’
Said Sita, ‘I am where I am brought down to.’
‘Is it your custom to dress your hair in a single braid,
to begin new love
by remembering, by mourning?’
Sita closing her ears at such implicating talk.
Raavana continuing, ‘I too am plunged
in a furrow of memory,
my brain grooved with your imprint …
You are my grief, my solace.
We are our grief, our solace.
You have seen, all the ladies who adore me
fell at my feet of their own accord.
I need not ever be flirting or stoop.
Ah, dark eyes Lady, have I not been courteous?’
Sita, head downward the while, finally lifted
a blade of grass
and laid the blade of grass wall-like
between herself and Raavana,
‘Do you think reputation enough to win me?
Do you not know I am the wife of Lord Rama?’
‘I would not ever touch you against your desire.’
‘I am as good as touched.
Yet I will never be touched except by my Lord.’
‘Have you, in essence, not touched me, Sita,
when you chose to
break free from your Circle of Chastity?’
‘How brave you are! Breaking a woman
by crafting her off
behind her husband’s back.’
‘My only craft my cup of beggary
hungering only for the touch of your alms.’
Raavana’s lust abating and rising with each
soaring wondrous note around Sita’s cool breath.
‘Where is your Lord of the Deerskin this past ten months?
He has shed you into my circle.’
Sita gave mockery for mockery,
‘So many wives, chuker, circle you it seems.
Why not come round to your wives? Do not give me
these jewels. Give them straight
to your wives. Why wake up the night
begging before another man’s
to-the-death beloved?’
Raavana sighed. Then ordered Sita’s attendants,
‘As before, give my queen any luxury she desire.
Bounty my queen with a perfect mango each day.
All pleasures are my queen’s suitors.’
When Raavana and his attendants departed,
Sita stayed on the verge. Fearlessly alone.
Hanuman watched Sita starting to cry.
Her arms embraced her legs. She sang to herself.
‘If Rama is my heart
where is my heart beating beating?
If Rama is my soul
where is my soul beating beating beating?
You are my light you will never go out …’
Then rushing for a branch
over which to hurl
her long single plait
as a noose
and up there
herself to be hanging!
Chapter Seven.four: You Shot-Hot Monkey!
After meeting Sita Hanuman becomes angered.
‘… no, please, dear Lady, I come from Rama.
I am here to help you. Rama is thinking about you always.
I can try and fly you back to Rama. I can save you,’
said Hanuman as he grew to his new normal size.
He put on Sita’s Kosala dialect
rather than speak in his regional tongue.
Sita threw herself on the floor,
crying even more now at being stopped by a … raksassy?
She questioned the monkey about Rama, at length.
And was impressed by his proper sequencing of thought.
She calmed and even seemed pleased
when Hanuman gave her Rama’s wedding ring
with RAMA inscribed upon it.
She sighed, ‘The more I touch this ring
the more I am hearing Rama.’
In exchange, so Rama knew Hanuman had met Sita,
memento to memento,
Sita took from her hair a pearl that rested on a gold leaf,
her Choodamani.
‘This pearl was plucked from the Great Milk Ocean
by the god Indra. He honoured my father with it.
O Hanuman, tell Rama I always think only of him.
Tell him Raavana has not laid on me
a breath or touch.
Even as you say, Hanuman, you could try to rescue me now,
and I bless you for it.
In our customs
no one else must rescue me.
Only Rama himself, with or without his army,
must rescue me.’
‘Rama will be inspired to know how firm you remain.
We will be here within weeks.’
Sita left for her chambers.
Hanuman felt so bad for Sita’s plight
that he lost himself.
Becoming again massive. So massive that he
Asoka Vana
pulling up trees
with his mega-
bare grip
then dunking
them back deep
in the ground
upside down
till the tree
roots were
all freaked
in the wind
whilst lolling
at the
moon.
The pleasure garden was a horror show.
Raavana got wind of the mess
and sent his army to capture the white monkey.
Raavana’s bruisers saw a gross simian
