Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana

by Edited by Anil Menon

“Why doesn’t she want to come to me when I’m awake?”

  After a pause, Aruna heard inside his mind: Because she is a devil. She refuses to recognize her own true nature. She thinks she can defy the gods themselves. If I let her be with you, she would make you even more miserable than she is making me.

  “Does she want to be a butterfly again?”

  The asura was silent.

  “Please,” Aruna said softly. “Whatever she wants. I no longer care what I am. Please release her.”

  No.

  Rage filled Aruna. “No?” he repeated.

  I’m giving you both one last chance. You must choose rightly this time. Both of you. Or I’ll force you to live apart, forever-and you’ll never be able to forget each other.

  “Asura, how do I choose?” Aruna asked. “What is Jalanili’s true nature?”

  He was alone.

  Aruna sat in his hut that evening and meditated on the sight of Jalanili’s face beneath the blue veil. Every time he found himself thinking, How beautiful she is, he would remember the asura’s words about her heart being broken.

  He slept.

  There were no dreams that night.

  Gentle rains came and watered the field outside Aruna’s hut. The drops of rain washed away Jalanili’s handprints. One morning Aruna woke to find the furrows lined with pale green sprouts. The mango trees were beginning to grow.

  When a month passed without a sign or dream of Jalanili, Aruna sat cross-legged on the floor of his hut in the evening and closed his eyes.

  “Asura,” he said.

  His mind was quiet. The sun, setting in the clear western skies, gave its last red light to the mango trees lifting their new leaves above the earth.

  In the humid summer air grew a grove of mango trees, their trunks as slender as the waists of young women. The first light of morning stole across the grassy avenues among the rows. Though it was early, the rising heat had made even the butterflies languid. Only a few floated among the glossy green leaves, seeking a cool sanctuary in which to hide from the coming afternoon’s fiery breath.

  A man with streaks of gray in his black hair stood beneath one of the mango trees. He contemplated the branches bent like archer’s bows under the weight of ripe fruit. The green skins of the mangoes were blushing red among the leaves.

  Aruna ran his fingers through his hair. With a rueful smile he sighed. His mango grove had grown green but barren for years. Then, early that spring, the trees had exploded with pink blossoms all at once. The fruit came, and ripened-all at once. Now he had more than five hundred trees, with no more than his own two hands to harvest the crop. It was the closest he had come to a natural disaster since his first planting.

  Not that he had lost hope in natural disasters. During that first season, in spite of Aruna’s meditations in the evenings, the young mango plants had defied all of his wishes and grown as if the gods themselves were tending them. Not a plant was lost as the sprouts became saplings, then mature trees. Even as he took pride in the grove, Aruna had been so desperate to see Jalanili again that he had considered setting his trees on fire. The thought of the beautiful woman in the blue sari running through the grove, the trees around her in flame, had stopped him even as he lowered the torch to the pile of dry firewood.

  Aruna reached and picked one of the mangoes. He carefully cut the fruit from its stem so as not to spill the tree’s caustic sap on his skin. He peeled the mango and took a bite of its yellow flesh. With the back of his hand he wiped the juice from his chin.

  “Asura,” Aruna said.

  With a resigned smile, he waited for an answer inside his mind from an old, whispering voice like a sandal dragging across gravel.

  None came.

  When Aruna opened his eyes, a woman was standing in front of him.

  Her face was covered with a veil. She stood half-hidden in the shade under the mango tree.

  He yelped in surprise as he jumped backwards. Aruna’s mango grove was so far from the closest village that he rarely saw other people. He managed to stop himself before he flung the knife in his hand at the woman out of shock.

  “You…” he said. Then Aruna whispered, “Jalanili?”

  The young woman raised her embroidered veil.

  She smiled at him.

  She was beautiful, with a row of white teeth like the seeds inside a mango’s core.

  But she was not Jalanili.

  Aruna bowed his head and mumbled a greeting as he listened to her speak. The young woman’s voice was so pleasantly distracting that Aruna quickly forgot everything she said, as if it flowed out of his mind like water. The sound of his own heart pounding filled his ears.

  He risked another glance at her face. The woman didn’t resemble Jalanili.

  She was, however, lovely.

  Through his shock and the woman’s patient explanations, Aruna grasped that she was looking for work. Yes, she said. She would be happy to help with the mango harvest.

  Aruna brought a basket and showed the woman how to pick the man goes from their stems without being burned by the sap. She lifted the edge of her sari and climbed with ease into the tree’s branches, where she sang a happy, wordless little song as she worked.

  Aruna had no more turned around when he found two more young women standing in front of him. They called with birdlike voices to the woman seated in the tree. She beamed down at them.

  Aruna ran to find more baskets and knives. By the time he returned to the mango tree, a small group of young women in multicolored saris had gathered in the shade and were laughing and talking together. It looked like a wedding party.

  He stopped and stared at the women.

  When Aruna had convinced himself that Jalanili was not among them-a difficult task, as their number seemed to increase even before his eyes-he greeted them, more warmly this time, and asked if they wanted to help. There was a chorus of delighted responses.

  And so it went throughout the morning.

  By afternoon the heat had grown so intense that Aruna felt light headed. He walked the avenues among the trees in the mango grove, calling to the hundreds of young women-in the trees, on the ground, walking with baskets of ripe fruit balanced on one shoulder or on their heads-to ask if they needed water or food. All laughed and said no, that the work was not work at all and that they were not in the least thirsty or hungry.

  In the heat, several of the women had taken off their veils and let them fall to the ground. The grass beneath the trees was covered with a rainbow of rich fabrics, as if a silk rug had been spread in the shade throughout the whole grove. Aruna tried not to step on the discarded veils as he walked.

  A laugh caught his ear. His footsteps slowed as he looked up.

  Aruna watched the bare arms of the women intertwining among the branches of the trees overhead as they picked mangoes. Eveywhere he looked, there was a naked shoulder, a tilted neck, a lock of black hair clinging with sweat to a graceful forehead. The trees rang with the sound of women’s voices. And always the arms, slender, glinting with a bangle or a string of golden beads, flowing together as if all of the women were one glorious, perfect creature.

  Aruna stopped.

  He could feel himself sweating and breathing hard. He tried to calm his rising pulse by inhaling and exhaling slowly, as he had learned to do while meditating in his hut. The effort only filled his lungs with the strange perfume of the women, as if from a thousand flowers, that blended with the scent of ripe mangoes and made the humid air even more intoxicating.

  There was a mantra he had known once. He had begun every meditation with it.

  Aruna fumbled through his memory, grasping for the word.

  As he did, one of the women in the tree above jumped down and landed lightly on bare feet in front of him. Her smile found Aruna’s eyes.

  He took a slow, reluctant step backward.

  Then a new voice spoke inside
Aruna’s head. He had never heard it before. He thought at first that it was the woman before him. The voice was young, and female, but it sounded nothing like the twittering that filled the mango grove.

  No! the voice shouted.

  Aruna’s body jerked as if he had stepped on a snake.

  I won’t love him! Not like this! Asura, I’ll kill myself first!

  Aruna murmured, “Jalanili.”

  A crow whispered:

  But you could be a thousand women and love him. Why be a human? Why be old and ugly and sick? You could be young forever. Look at him down there, my blue-winged beauty. Look at that mango grove. Look at how he’s looking at her. Do you think he remembers you now?

  The woman who had leaped out of the tree tilted her head and laughed. “Who is this woman, Jalanili?” she said.

  But her voice cracked in a harsh caw as she spoke Jalanili’s name.

  Inside Aruna’s mind the crow whispered:

  He’s human. His life is long and his memory is short. He hasn’t seen you since you planted those trees. How could he still love you, you little fool?

  “Jalanili,” Aruna said again.

  In an instant the sun disappeared and the sky grew dark.

  The women’s voices abruptly ceased laughing. It was as if an unseen hand had swept them together into a single force that, to Aruna’s ears, now sounded like a clap of thunder. Or a gathering deluge of water.

  Above the noise pressing against his ears, Aruna could hear the young woman’s voice cry inside his head:

  I will not become an asura like you! I will not love him this way! Make me a human! Let me go!

  “Jalanili,” Aruna said for the third time.

  He collapsed.

  Another woman’s scream made Aruna’s eyes fly open.

  He was lying on a silk rug in the shade of a mango tree. Sita was turning her face away to hide her eyes against Rama’s shoulder.

  Rama’s bow was in his left hand, but it was down at his side, his eyes on Lakshmana.

  Lakshmana’s sword was raised above his head. His eyes flashed.

  The curved blade of the sword flashed as it came down, faster than lightning. Aruna felt the grass beneath him shudder as Lakshmana’s sword struck the earth.

  A hand, its bones thin and birdlike under wrinkled skin, was gripped in Aruna’s own hand. It twitched at his side on the silk rug. He tightened his fingers around it, but couldn’t turn his head to look.

  No one moved or spoke.

  At last Sita lifted her face from Rama’s shoulder. She said, “It was an asura. Wasn’t it?”

  Lakshmana tugged his sword free. When he lifted it, Aruna saw the blade stained with blood and black feathers.

  Lakshmana looked down at Aruna. “What about these two?” he said.

  Aruna lifted his head.

  The hand he held was that of an old woman in a blue sari. Strands of white hair crowned her wrinkled forehead beneath her veil. She was blinking at him in shock.

  The eyes were Jalanili’s.

  “I think-” Rama began.

  He was interrupted by Sita, who had lifted one hand to her mouth as she began to laugh-slowly at first, and then with greater and greater delight.

  “Love?” Rama asked.

  “It’s the butterflies!”

  A smile crept across Rama’s face as he looked down at Aruna and Jalanili.

  “And, so,” Rama said, “the ones who invited in our first asura.”

  “We didn’t invite her,” Jalanili gasped.

  Aruna squeezed her hand as hard as he could. Even Rama and Lakshmana looked surprised at her bold words. Sita, however, was still laughing. The sound, like silver bells, quieted as she looked with gentle amusement at Jalanili.

  “But you wished to be human,” Rama said quietly. “Your desire invited her.”

  Aruna and Jalanili lowered their eyes in shame.

  Sita shook her head. “I think what they wished for,” she said, her eyes still sparkling, “was to love as we do. Isn’t that right?”

  Jalanili nodded, her eyes still down.

  “Which is both the same, and not the same.” Sita’s smile became wistful. “You have wished for more than you know. But I think you have suffered more too. Look.” She turned to Rama. “Our brown. His hair is gray now. And look at her, our pretty blue, old enough to be a grandmother. Does it seem to you, love, that this asura has played these two a wretched trick?”

  Rama nodded. “You may choose fairly, then,” he said to Aruna and Jalanili. “Human lives together, but from a young age. Long, and rich, with much care and sorrow and some happiness. Or a few days together-perhaps more-as butterflies, here in our garden, without anything to trouble your hearts.”

  Aruna looked at Jalanili.

  “Butterfly,” he said.

  At the same moment Jalanili looked at him and said, “Human.”

  Rama sighed.

  Sita closed her eyes and bit her lip to stop her laughter.

  Lakshmana rolled his eyes.

  “You have spoken truly,” Rama said. “You cannot make up your minds, but you are obstinate even in that.”

  Rama smiled at Sita, then at Aruna and Jalanili.

  “You are human, both of you. You have found your true nature. Cherish it, and your many days together, with our blessings.”

  Game of Asylum Seekers

  K. Srilata

  It is a game not meant for bright summer afternoons when, irrespective of how hard you try, the shadows will fall long and sharp. But Zero likes playing around with the impossible and it is only a matter of time before she discovers a way to make the shadows cease. The rules are easy enough to master, the instructions clear as window panes freshly washed and dry. But like with all zero-sum games, it is a case of two steps forward, two steps back.

  They call it the Game of Asylum Seekers and the ones who are marketing it worldwide are probably laughing all the way to their banks. There are separate versions for men and women. The one Zero is currently playing is the women’s game. She happens to think it is brilliant.

  It hadn’t taken a genius to think it up. A simple theft of ideas and a bit of smart re-packaging—that was all there was to this enormously absorbing game. Every now and then, an upgraded version would be advertised, there would be a stampede to get hold of it, and the older version whisked clean from public memory.

  The stone age version used to be called the Uttara Kanda and for some reason its players were called Sitas. Every one of them. The Uttara Kanda came in a quaint, old-fashioned box with a syrupy-sweet picture of a woman in a saree and a revealing blouse. The woman had her glance fondly trained on two young boys who seemed to be amusing themselves with bows and arrows. For “setting”, there was a disorderly bunch of trees.

  The Game of Asylum Seekers (Women) 2010, in which Zero is currently absorbed, is absolutely the latest version. It is played solo in Imax Wilderness, under absurdly difficult circumstances which, of course, is part of the fun. The point of the game is to get to Earth Mother Square so that you could cease making shadows once and for all. All players got there, eventually. Some just took a little longer. But that was okay. Everyone was a winner. You could have as much time as you wanted. More or less, that is.

  The game is advertised, somewhat vacuously, as being an “unbeat-ably sexy, roller-coaster ride of a game”. The roller-coaster bit is true enough. As for the game’s famous Imax wilderness setting, it is some thing even Disney would have been hard-pressed to match. It has an upbeat, kitschy, garbage-bin feel to it and players are pampered silly by empty cans of beer and moldy bread from a fortnight ago that not even the birds will eat. It is not exactly cheap but once you had paid for it—with your blood and all that stuffing inside your original head—you could look forward to a trouble-free run and access to all kinds of happiness. Not surprising therefore that the game is as popular as it is.
Though of course, if you were old-fashioned and a little intolerant of fads and gizmos, you would probably suspect that it was that same old Uttara Kanda all over again. A game that had been played since the very beginning of time. Even by some of our goddesses.

  The bread tastes—Zero doesn’t seek after the word which seems to have dropped away from her. The wilderness is like a bouncer when it comes to words. It is especially intolerant of adjectives and players are advised to use them with restraint. Once spoken, adjectives create a voice and the impression of an opinion and that is against the rules.

  The Use of Adjectives Rule is tied quite closely to the Invisibility Rule. Players are expected to cultivate invisibility. The really experienced players never cast so much as a shadow. If you made a mistake and someone saw you, you could loose up to fifteen points for being a criminal or an illegal immigrant out to mug decent, respectable folk.

  So you reserved adjectives and visibility for emergencies and for occasional use in food voucher queues. Talking of food vouchers, you had to be careful about how you spent those. Which meant you had to watch how much you ate. It was a little like being on a fancy diet. Over-eating and wastefulness could set you back twenty points.

  Surpanakha isn’t here today. Yesterday, she had been in the same line as Zero to claim her voucher. Claim is not an adjective but it feels suspiciously like the wrong sort of verb. A verb with a too-loud voice. Zero has another go. Yesterday, Surpanakha had been in the same line as her for the voucher. She had never spoken to Surpanakha of course. One mustn’t speak to other players. That too was a rule. But even though Surpanakha could never be a friend, nothing had stopped Zero from observing her out of the corners of her eyes. It is the way women observe each other and others all the time. And Surpanakha had struck her as one of those intuitively competent players with a golden touch. For one thing, she had got herself to Gender-Shedding Square quite early in the game. Which must have made it easy. And she was really good with shadows too. Knew how to keep them in check. No wonder she had finished so soon. (Though she hadn’t been half as lucky that other time—with Him, had she?)