Dasaratha saluted back as best as he could manage, his chest and shoulder muscles protesting. He was the commander of all armed forces after all, the supreme senapati. He felt painfully ashamed of his overweight, decrepit body. Once, he would have been able to take on four armed Kshatriyas bare-handed, disarming them all in a matter of minutes. Now, he could only recall those martial asanas with deep regret and thank the devas he could still walk about and stand erect.
‘Focus, Dasaratha,’ Guru Vashishta’s sub-audible voice said in his ear.
Again that sense that the guru’s instructions were within his head rather than in his ear. The calm, iron-steady voice forced the maharaja to shed all his needless emotions and thoughts and concentrate solely on the task at hand. It was harder than it used to be.
‘Focus.’
The guru’s voice was firmer this time, a coiled reprimand. Unknown to Dasaratha, who regarded tales of the legendary Brahman power of seers with healthy scientific scepticism, the guru possessed not just telepathy but complete mental control. He had ‘heard’ the maharaja’s distracted thoughts about his decaying physique. Just as he could now ‘hear’ Dasaratha’s thoughts straying back to the morning’s dalliance with his first queen … It would not do to have the maharaja’s distraction lead to an error in protocol or a misspoken word. This was no ordinary visitor they were receiving. Vashishta put the weight of his considerable personality into one final command.
‘Focus.’
Dasaratha focussed. Forcing his mind to clear itself and direct its attention outwards.
The figure standing just outside the palace gates was like a painting come alive. The striking twice-as-large-as-life-sized one hanging in the palace foyer, perhaps. That work of art had been painted over four centuries earlier by a king of the Suryavansha dynasty, Dasaratha’s illustrious ancestor Dilipa. The official chronicles of the Suryavansha clan, to which historical record
Dasaratha himself had contributed from time to time, noted in its entry that the noble Dilipa had painted this portrait entirely from memory. Dilipa had returned from a chance visit to the ashram of the great sage Vishwamitra, greatly impressed by the sage’s insightful advice. That encounter had changed his life and fortunes, and the future of the Suryavansha dynasty itself, and as a tribute Dilipa had poured every gram of his considerable artistic talent into rendering the magnificent portrait. Since the great sage Vishwamitra had never actually set foot in the city of Ayodhya, that painting had stood as his representative likeness for these past four hundred years, becoming the basis for several lesser imitations, and even a statue in Seers’ Square. But today, at long last, Dilipa’s descendant Maharaja Dasaratha could vouch with pride and a strange swelling emotion that the painting’s accuracy was amazing. Perfect, down to the last detail, Great Dilipa. Absolutely perfect.
The figure before him looked as if he had just this minute stepped out of that enormous canvas.
He was clad in the simple garb of an ascetic: a coarse red-ochre dhoti hand-woven from beaten jute, battered wooden toe-grip slippers, matted unkempt hair swirling around his craggy face, a long straggly white beard, red-beaded rudraksh mala around his neck. At a glance he could have passed for any of the dozens of tapasvi sadhus that emerged from the Southwoods each spring, gaunt and wasted from their rigorous abstinence and penance. Yet he possessed that same striking air of great inner strength and power that Dilipa had captured in that historic portrait.
The appearance of a seer-mage who had once been a great Kshatriya and maharaja. The unmistakable arrogance and dignity of Arya royalty.
He was facing away from them when Dasaratha, Vashishta and Sumantra approached. Staring out at the high slopes of the northern hills, the sloping ridges that eventually rose to become the foothills of the Himalayas. His long beard and weathered garments flapped in the wind. The attendant following on Sumantra’s heels gasped and muttered an exclamation of disbelief in Awadhi commonspeak. The startled servant, obviously shocked at the sight of a legend from history books come alive, clattered the arghya bowl and basin together and the sound rang out on the still clear air. There was no traffic on the vast expanse of Raghuvamsha Avenue this early on a feast day and the sound was as grating as a cartwheel cracking.
It attracted the attention of the visitor.
He turned, holding his hefty staff easily in one powerfully muscled hand. Dasaratha felt a tremor of anticipation. A sense of history in the making. He would be the first king of Ayodhya to be graced with the visit of this legendary seer-mage. And on a most auspicious day. Despite his resolve to keep his thoughts clear, it occurred to him suddenly that if he could convince the great sage to stay until the coronation, a fortnight from today, it would lay the ultimate seal of approval on his last act as king. His first-born, Rama, would go down in Arya history as the first prince of Ayodhya to be blessed at his coronation by not one but two of the greatest seer-mages and brahmarishis ever, Vashishta and Vishwamitra. Now that would be an epoch-making coronation!
He opened his parched lips to speak the appropriate greeting, lowering himself to his knees to prostrate himself before the great Brahmin. But before he could say a single word, the living legend spoke first, breaking protocol and surprising Dasaratha.
‘Maharaja Dasaratha, in keeping with the ancient tradition of guru-dakshina between Kshatriya and Brahmin, I have come to ask a boon of you. As is the custom, I exhort you to agree without hesitation or pause to grant me my heart’s desire, regardless of what I ask for. Honour your caste, your clan and yourself, and agree without delay. I, Vishwamitra, sage of sages, command it.’
EIGHT
The doe leaped out of Rama’s arms. He had enfolded her in a gentle embrace, careful not to grip her too hard, and when he sensed her muscles tensing for the leap, he made no attempt to stop her. She jumped upwards and away, bounding across the grassy knoll in the direction of the river. Reaching the rim of the knoll, she paused and turned her head. Her ears flicked as she looked back with wide alarmed eyes. He smiled and rose to his feet, speaking softly, his voice barely audible below the sound of the river.
‘Did I scare you? That was not my intention, little beauty. I was only eager to be your friend. Will you not come back and speak to me again?’
The doe watched him from the edge of the precipice, her body still turned towards the path that led down to the river, only her head twisted back towards him. She made no move to return, yet she did not flee immediately.
Rama took a step towards her, then another. She did not run. He took several steps more, but when he was within twenty paces or so, her flank rippled and her ears flickered at a faster rate.
So he stopped again. He called to her. She stayed where she was, watching him. For a long moment, they stayed that way, the boy and the doe, watching each other, the river rushing along, the sun breasting the top of the northern hills to shine down in its full glory. In the distance, the city caught the light of the new day and sent back a thousand glittering reflections. Towers and spires, windows and arches, domes and columns, glass and brass, silver and gold, copper and bronze, crystal and shell, bead and stone, all were illuminated at once, and Ayodhya blazed like a beacon of gold fire, filling the valley with a luminous glow. In the light of this glorious new day, it was easy to dismiss the nightmare as just that, a bad dream. And yet … he could still hear the screams, see the awful wounds, the gaping—
Stop!
He straightened and stared at the city, the deer forgotten, the mango he had been about to pick before he saw the doe abandoned. It took a moment of steady pranayam breathing to restore him to the sense of calm he had experienced when stalking and catching the deer.
He focussed on the sight before him. His beloved Ayodhya resplendent in the sunlight of a new day, a new season, a new harvest year. He walked forward, eyes fixed on the blazing city. Before they had grown old enough to be sent to gurukul, he and his brothers had spent any number of days here in the shade of this mango grove. Playing, fighting, raci
ng, all the things that young boys and young princes alike were wont to do. He had come here today hoping these nostalgically familiar environs would cleanse his mind of the nightmare that had broken his sleep. So far he hadn’t been entirely successful.
His feet found the edge of the knoll and he stopped, poised ten yards or more above the raging river. It was the point where the Sarayu roared around a bend in the valley, tumbling over rocks and boulders with the haste and energy of a river still in the first stage of its lengthy course. The sound was thunder sustained. He spread his arms, raised his face to the warm golden sunlight, and laughed. Droplets of spray drifted up slowly, catching his hair and simple white dhoti, like diamonds glittering in the sunlight.
When he returned to the grove, the ache at the back of his neck was lessened considerably. He thought he could manage some naashta now. Not the lavish buffet that Susama-daiimaa laid out each morning, enough to feed an army garrison, but just a fruit. His eyes sought out the large green kairee he had been about to pluck off a low-hanging branch when he had spied the deer. Found it, plucked it and smiled as a few loosened leaves fluttered down around his head like a bridegroom’s welcome. Ah, now there was a question that could easily be answered. How did a raw green mango taste on the first day of spring? A question worthy of one of his Uncle Maharaja Janak’s famous philosophical councils at Mithila court. He would solve the mystery in a moment.
He nursed the kairee in his palm. It was heavy, firm, filled with the thick juice of the king of fruits. But this was not truly a king yet. Not even a crown prince. Simply a prince in waiting. And yet, a kairee was more than a mango. For you had not truly lived until you had tasted the unspeakably teeth-keening sourness of a kairee, bitten into the mustard-yellow flesh, green skin and all, tearing bits with the edges of your teeth, teasing the fruit, sucking on the succulent sourness within. He patted his waist, checking that the small packet of salt was still there. He drew it out and opened it carefully, seating himself cross-legged on the dry grassy earth. Kairee and salt. He was ready to discover heaven on earth once more.
He licked the kairee’s tip, wetting the skin. Then dipped it into the salt. Grains of brownish-white namak stuck to the parrot-green fruit. The tart aroma of the kairee mingled with the earthy smell of the rock salt now. He raised it to his mouth, shutting his eyes in anticipation of the sourness that would explode on his palate in a moment.
The small downy hairs on the backs of his arms—he had his mother’s smooth near-hairlessness rather than his father’s hirsuteness—prickled in anticipation.
The fruit was almost at his mouth when he heard the high, keening cry. Followed by laughter and hoarse yells. And, even above the roar of the river and the cacophony of birds singing in the thickly growing trees of the mango grove, the unmistakable sound of a bow-string twanging.
He frowned and listened. The hand holding the kairee froze. The other hand, poised above the salt, ready to dip the kairee the moment his teeth had broken the skin, scooping up more salt to cut the sourness, hovered.
A moment later, he heard it again, the distinct quaver of a tautly strung bow speaking to the wind. And this time there was an answering voice, as familiar as the first: a dull thwacking sound.
A metal-headed wooden arrow striking flesh. And the squeal of a beast in pain.
Rama shot to his feet with a swiftness that the doe would have envied. The unbitten kairee was tossed aside, the salt packet overturned. An instant later, he was speeding up the knoll. He stopped at the rise, leaning out with the easy confidence of a fifteen-year-old in perfect command of his bodily reflexes.
The scene below couldn’t have been clearer had a gypsy nautanki troupe been performing it with puppets for toddlers.
The doe lay by the edge of the river, within reach of the grass. In a few seconds it would have been in the grass and virtually invisible. The arrow had struck it high on the foreleg, stunning it.
There was a lot of blood but Rama thought the wound wasn’t fatal. Most deer died of shock at the moment of impact, slow blood loss or infected wounds. His fists clenched as he saw the doe struggle to rise again, bleating with pain then flopping back on the glistening stones of the river bank.
The perpetrators of the crime—he thought of it as nothing less—were a group of at least a dozen burly, fair-skinned northerners. They were clad in the wolf-pelts and bear-pelts of the Garhwal tribes, a loosely related clan of mountain people who lived on the lower slopes of the Garhwal Himalayas, some yojanas north and west of Ayodhya, outside Kosala borders.
They came a few times a year to trade at the melas. They were probably here for the Holi celebration; Ayodhya’s Holi feast was renowned throughout the Arya nations, and the city had always maintained an open-house policy during festivals and melas. But that didn’t include hunting within sight of the city. From the wineskins they all carried—and kept swigging from—Rama knew they were drunk and seeking good sport. One of them, a young loutish oaf who could barely hold his bow straight, was trying to finish off the doe. The others were egging him on with yells and sadistic suggestions, speaking the crude pahadi dialect of the mountain tribes.
Rama sprinted along the knoll, running down to a point where the overhang doubled back upon itself. He leaped down to the lower path, deftly dodged a cobra sunning itself on a rock—the snake hissed in warning but made no move to attack him—and bounded down the last two yards, landing in the thick, bouncy kusalavya grass. In a moment, he was at the bank of the river.
He ran without care for arrows and reached the wounded doe. He knelt by its side, examining it.
Above the roar of the river, almost deafening now that he was down here, he heard the surprised shouts of the Garhwalis.
The doe turned her head to stare up at him. His heart broke when he saw the fear and confusion in those large terrified eyes. Her lips parted as if she wanted to speak, to explain her plight, but only a sharp mewling sound emerged. He tore a strip from his kurta, glad he had worn it in expectation of a nippy wind. Wrapping the cloth around her injured leg, he tied it tightly enough to staunch the bleeding until the arrow could be removed. The doe kept turning her head, her teeth baring as she reflexively tried to reach and remove the thing embedded in her flesh. Rama touched the top of her downy head, and whispered softly: ‘I will be back to help you.’
Then he stood and turned to face the men.
NINE
Dasaratha looked up at the tall, imposing figure that stood before him at the front gates of his palace. He knew he couldn’t delay his response by even an instant.
‘Mahadev,’ he began, using the universal term of respect that elevated the honoured visitor to the level of a great god. ‘My adherence to tradition is as sincere as any of my illustrious ancestors. You have my unhesitant and joyful agreement to fulfil any desire you name. As is the custom, whatever you wish to ask of me, I shall give it without question, be it my proudest possession.’
The seer’s craggy face, brighter now in the growing daylight, smiled at the king’s words. He brought his heavy staff down hard on the packed earth of the avenue, punctuating his first words with a solid thud.
‘Ayodhya-naresh, hum prasan huye. You have pleased me greatly with your reply, lord of Ayodhya. Now, I exhort you to remember this promise you have made me in the sacred presence of your own mahaguru and marg-darshak Vashishta himself, as well as these other associates.’
Vishwamitra gestured at Sumantra and his attendants, who had been so terrified when the seer began to speak that they had dropped flat on their faces in the dust of the avenue, where they still lay, too scared to even look up at the fabled Brahmin.
‘They shall be my witnesses,’ Vishwamitra added, and struck the ground once more with his staff, underlining the pact with the gesture.
Dasaratha wanted desperately to steal a glance at Guru Vashishta, who hadn’t uttered a word since they had emerged from the gates. But he guessed correctly that this was one situation where his protocol was clear and unambigu
ous.
‘Mahadev,’ he said, bowing once again with his hands folded. ‘I beg of you, give me the honour of performing the customary arghya and welcoming you into my humble abode.’
The brahmarishi looked up at the palace, towering above all other structures on the vast avenue.
‘Of course,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Of course. But do you not wish to know what boon I am about to ask of you?’
Dasaratha kept his hands joined and his eyes directed downwards at the seer-mage’s dusty bare feet. ‘Mahadev, I have already sworn to give you whatever your heart desires. It would honour me greatly if you would utter your sacred request within the walls of my abode. It is not seeming of me to keep you, a great and esteemed guest, standing on this public causeway. Please, do me the honour.’
And without further ado, he gestured to the attendants, who were still frozen. After a sharply whispered order from Sumantra, they scurried forward with the arghya bowl and items, almost falling over their own feet in fear. They were so nervous that the attendant holding the heavy jug filled with Ganga-jal, the sacred water of the Ganges, almost spilled it on the maharaja himself.
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