Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana

by Edited by Anil Menon

  After a while, everything grew silent; Silent like the graveyard. A horrible feeling rose in Raama. He felt physically sick. He clutched his bow and in his frustration, cried out loud. Lakshmana tried to pry open the door with his bow, but nothing seemed to help. The silence outside grew deeper and deeper within itself. It rang in their heads like the loud clanging of brass bells. They waited for every moment to pass with such impatience. Once in a while, a woman called out orders frantically, in a strange language. The intervals of silence grew longer and more menacing. A loud crackling noise followed and the smell of smoke crept into the barn. The brothers pressed their ears to the door. They could hear faint moans and after a while that too stopped. Not knowing what was happening outside was maddening.

  Hours passed in revolting terror before the first rays of the morning sun crept into the barn through the thin gap beneath the door.

  Someone was unbolting the door from outside. Raama and Laksh-mana clutched their bows and held it in position, pulling the bow string as far back as they could. Normally, they could shoot with killer precision. But now, fear had given way to doubt and their hands were shaking uncontrollably.

  When the door opened, the brothers relaxed their grip of the bows and lowered it to the ground. Viswamitra’s frame looked ghostly in the light that was now flooding into the barn. A thousand thoughts surged through Raama’s mind. What happened to the Rishis? The women? The children? Had anyone survived? Why had the Rishi locked them in the barn? He wanted to scream at Viswamitra, but strangely no words would come out of his mouth.

  “We can leave now,” said Viswamitra. “We will reach Ayodhya by night fall.”

  What? Is this why they had been brought here? To watch the people they were supposed to protect die such gruesome deaths? Raama was furious. He was reluctant to step out of the barn. He knew that the sight outside would be appalling. Mangled bodies, slit throats, burnt flesh. No, he was definitely not ready for it. Reluctantly, he inched towards the door followed by Lakshmana. No amount of martial training had prepared him for the scene that was awaiting him outside.

  The white linen tents were intact. There were no bodies anywhere. All the people he had seen the previous night were there going about their daily activities as though nothing had happened. Had it all been a dream? He turned to Lakshmana; surely, he could not have had the same dream too.

  Lakshmana stood absolutely still. His eyes were fixed upon the settlement on the hillock. Raama turned towards the hillock and only a low gasp of disgust left his mouth. The huts they had seen earlier were on fire. From the trees around the hillock, bodies hung like logs. The watchtowers were on fire. Bodies were strewn all over the place and it was mostly women, dressed in white. The incidents of the previous evening flashed across Raama’s mind. In the centre of the settlement stood a stake and a woman, probably in her forties was bound to it. Her hands tied back and body burnt randomly with embers. She was bruised all over. Blood had drenched her sari red. She must have been dead for at least a few hours.

  Puzzled and shocked, Raama looked at Viswamitra.

  “That’s Tatakai, the leader of the Asura tribe.”

  Tribe? Were they not vicious beasts that ate Rishis and disrupted their yajnas? thought Raama.

  “We tried to negotiate with them to get them to move to a different place. You see, we are planning on conducting a great yajna that will go on for at least five years from now and we found this forest a well suited place.”

  Raama realised that the tribe’s people were hardly armed. They must have merely been defending their ancestral forest. A horrifying feeling crept up his chest. His lungs felt constrained for air and his stomach seemed to twirl in revolt.

  “So why bring us” Raama asked in a tone mixed with fear, shock and guilt.

  Once again that vague smile spread across Viswamitra’s face. “We had finished off the men of the tribe, including Tatakai’s son Subahu over a month ago. But the families would not leave. Now, is it not asymmetrical warfare for men to kill unarmed women? If the world knew, imagine the propaganda they could spread with it, despite the Asuras being inferior and low born. People don’t understand the significance of yajnas these days. But it’s not wrong for a teen like you to kill the female Asuras. It’s a fair match then. That is why we needed you”.

  Tears welled in Raama’s eyes. Lakshmana walked to a boulder nearby and slumped on it.

  “That is why we needed you. Be proud Raama and Lakshmana, the world will remember you as the young princes who killed the demon Tatakai and saved the great yajna.” Saying this, Viswamitra callously walked ahead. Raama’s legs refused to move forward. After walking a few paces, Viswamitra turned back and asked with a sinister laugh “You didn’t really think we needed the help of you children to finish off a woman now, did you?”

  Test of Fire

  Pervin Saket

  Fellow Styonkars,

  As SigEv just transmitted to you, the experiment has failed and I have returned. Yes, three hundred and four kosos before I was due. But remaining on Earth would only have wasted waste precious time. The Planet of Colour did not meet the criteria and I was compelled to ask Dharti to carry me back. We must begin the search for another, more worthy race. I intimate you now, before the official sabha meeting due in the eighth hissa, because it is best we resume the archive searches, choose from the volunteers and draw plan layouts. The time of the bequest approaches and another deserving race must be identified before the 444th Chakker of Larissa around Styon. And this time we must choose more carefully, lest our trial fails, like it did with Earthlok.

  For the first time since the Rounds of the Bequest, a race has been denied what it should have easily earned. Certainly you will want to know why—particularly the Mantris, whose fate it is now to scout for the next beneficiaries. The matter however, will be much discussed at the sabha, and it is futile to delve into details in so short a correspondence. It’ll suffice for now to know that our side of the test went on without a hitch, but they faltered repeatedly. Their last act proved them clearly unfit for such a historic revelation. Mercifully though, they will never know what they have lost.

  The answer to the eventual ‘why’ of existence, the question plagues every race’s soul. It requires either minds that are open enough to grasp its vastness or small enough to live only for the truth of the moment. Earthlok can boast of neither; the Planet of Colour is far too frivolous to deserve or appreciate such a gift . More so because the bequest can never be reversed. On the Planet of Colour, birds talk, chariots fly, humans perform miracles, but their minds are caught in tight webs of mediocrity. The race of Manus is petty.

  Subhi and Jaul, my patient trainers, you would have been proud had you seen your pupil merge so seamlessly into the role of a royal Earth princess, complete with all the conventions and ceremonies. Goka, the wisest of Mantris, on your advice we tested not any random Manus but he who was considered The Best among Men—Purushuttam. When a race is ready for the reason behind its existence, the particular suffices for the examination. Yet, worried about mistakenly rejecting Earthlok due to the faults of an ill-chosen candidate, we picked the one who they deemed the highest among mortals. One who embodied every value that they cherished; one who acted on their highest principles; one who will in fact be hailed the Ideal Man for centuries to come.

  Morphed into an Earthwoman, I prayed to their Gods, wore their garbs and accepted their relationships, as planned. Their customs, like those of many Presight races we have already witnessed, are obsolete and reek of fear. I saw Earthwomen, clever but conniving, brave but narrow, their children shackled by tunnelled visions. These however, were not our criteria for the decision, and they were accordingly ignored, allowing for the role of conditioning, the convenience of repetition over rebellion. And in any case, it was Purushuttam who counted.

  You are already aware, due to Dharti’s SigEv transmissions of Significant Events that I chose him at a special
Earthlok ceremony, to be what they call varyingly, var, husband or pati Later details shall be divulged at the sabha, but subsequently, situations compelled me to live like a nomadic Earthling, wandering alone, isolated save two Earthmen, one of whom was my Earth var, the Purushuttam. Strangely, those were blissful moments, spent in picking wild fruit, bathing in sweet streams, feasting on the colours of the famed planet, away from their ritualistic lives. A far cry of course from the comforts of the palace, but what do fourteen Earth years of physical difficulties count in a sea of eventual youthful immortality?

  Youth. Lust. The flying chariot—you were worried about me, I remember, and it took six SigEv transmissions to assure all Styonkars of my safety. But I did not blame him. For lust is fuelled within the loins and as loathsome as it is, it will never be a perversion of the heart. Isolation again. This time within flowered gardens and perfumes, punctuated by wise counsel of beautiful women. The role, the test, the mute pretence—I thought it would all end when finally the battle was over and the ten heads smashed, smeared with blood and dust.

  Only, it was far from over. A washer-man was all it took and I was sent through the blazing fire. You can imagine not the intensity of those flames, the cold, mocking crackle of the orange, the first sting of human tears. Purushuttam, the highest among men fell prey to a mere rumour, and collapsed from his pedestal. The suspicion, the fear, the doubts that lurked his mind could be forgiven, overlooked. They could be pacified and explained. What doomed Manus was the need to seek approval from even the lowest of the rung. The desire to be respected by those whom he could never have respected back. The act of giving up every scruple he had, every principle he upheld, only to be adored by one more person. The Ideal Man didn’t value his own opinions, only those that others had of him.

  I felt then not the heat but the tightening corridors of their minds, lairs too binding for the wisdom of their origins. The weight of all our eternal years crashed down on me, the smallness of humankind pressed against itself.

  I activated the Homecoming Hoop and Dharti brought me back. Earth failed. The Planet of Colour shall never know why it exists, why it was really made. Goka, let the next deserving race be found.

  Sita.

  The Other Woman

  Manjula Padmanabhan

  Mandodari stirred in her bed of crocus petals. She opened her eyes, sat up and looked around. Something had changed. But she could not tell what it was.

  She got out of bed, bathed in pigeon’s blood, ate a breakfast of dolphin milk curds and stepped out onto her terrace. From the highest level of the great iron palace, she could see the island nation spreading away on all sides like a living carpet: emerald fields fragrant under the sun, coconut palms nodding in the light breeze, peasants bent over and toiling. Then her pet black peacock sprang up onto the parapet wall in front of her and began to dance. He had not done that for many centuries.

  Yes!

  Something had changed.

  But what?

  Throwing on a peignoir of silk and opals, she went to find her husband. He was in his apartments, surrounded by glowing wall-charts, speaking with someone on a small device attached to one of his ears and tapping with the fingers of both hands on a flat tablet supported on the back of a slave crouching in front of him. His multiple heads each had their own headsets. He smiled at Mandodari and reached out to pat her rump, but was clearly in no mood to talk. She left him and wandered slowly through the myriad rooms of her home, her expression thoughtful.

  Her in-laws and co-wives were in residence, but she neither felt like disturbing them nor did she believe any of them would be interested in the change that was stirring within her eternal world. The brothers-in-law weren’t famed for their intellects, the sisters-in-law were fawningly affectionate but could not be trusted to be sincere. And the co-wives? Well. Their attention spans extended only as far as their TV remotes. Yet even had she known someone who might have been willing to hearing her out, the realization was growing that the source of the change had come into being in the mortal world. And that she alone was the target of it.

  She could not remember anything like this having happened before. Her position had always been one of spouse-in-the-background, the face less bed-warmer who had less than a walk-on part in the great dramas of the mythic age. If ever she made an appearance, it was as a snivel ling nag or noble not-quite-cuckoldee. There were even some dramas in which she had the joyous position of offering counselling services to a husband whose would-be mistress remained obstinately unavailable!

  Any revisions to this unfortunate plot were welcome to her. Harnessing her swans, she made arrangements for an extended journey to the mortal dimension.

  She visited shopping malls and amusements parks, stepped into homes and hotels, playgrounds and prisons, factories and sweatshops. Initially she was careful to avoid manifesting herself on the material plane. It required all her concentration and she didn’t enjoy the sensations of be ing confined within a simple physical body, embedded in Time. But the sight of such teeming hordes of mortal beings fascinated her. There had not been so many of them in the past. When millions of them congregated for parades or riots the sight was sometimes breathtaking. There were occasions when, watching them, she found herself experiencing something very close to envy. Which was surely bizarre. As a divine, she should feel nothing but pity or disgust or amusement. There was an unspoken belief amongst her fellow-divines that descents into the fleshly dimension were at best an indulgence, at worst a vice. Those who practised regular visitations did so furtively. It was understood that their activities should not result in major disruptions of mortal time-space, that the actual thickening should occur in secret and that alarming or fearful forms were to be avoided.

  But discretion had never been Mandodari’s strong suit. Like many another demon, she adored excess and gloried in spectacle. She tried to follow the conventions, by arranging her first couple of efforts in the midst of thick forests, where the local mortals were steeped in their beliefs about the spirit world. She was delighted that they recognized her as an immortal, reacting with respect and fear. For this very reason, however, they provided nothing in the way of conversation, leave alone entertainment.

  Losing patience, for her third attempt she chose a densely populated area. She believed she’d done her homework well by choosing a clothing store in the metropolis called, so far as she could tell, “Boss Town.” It was on the coast of a major land-mass that some humans referred to as North America. The inhabitants were extremely devout: they spent the major part of their day worshipping glowing screens. After nightfall, they remained indoors while the great warehouses called malls closed their doors to the public.

  Once her manifestation was complete, Mandodari admired herself in the mirrored walls of a changing-room stall. She was two metres tall and had modelled herself on a priestess called Lady GooGoo whose pink-skinned and golden ringleted likeness had been featured in a popular form of street art called “bill boards.” She appeared very frequently on the glowing screens, howling in front of the shrieking, ululating hordes who worshipped her.

  Of course it was darker than a moonless night in the tiny changing room. The lights and the ventilation were both off . The divine tourist was naked but had expected to help herself to the clothes on the racks outside. But when Mandodari exited the stall, she found herself sur rounded by miles of tiny frilly dresses, stretchy sleep-suits, socks the size of new-born kittens and endless pairs of woolly booties. She was in the babies’ section.

  Pale, watery light seeped into the main section of Sear’s via skylights, from the neon signs on the exterior of the mall. Clad in her heavy body, she struggled to find her way around the silent, darkened store. But the buzzing hum of electric devices caused an unpleasant tingling in her ears so she didn’t even attempt to look for light-switches. Disconcertingly life-like statues draped in clothes that represented some of the styles and cuts available in that section, poked u
p above the mass of merchandise. She had as yet only a rudimentary understanding of mortal languages and certainly no desire to memorize all the hundreds of different scripts available. The signs and labels in English made no sense to her. The blonde giantess had no choice but to stumble around until she was in an area where the clothes looked as if they might fit her.

  Her research had shown that most women these days wore a combi nation of leggings and short, tight tops. Once she had found the jeans section, she discovered to her consternation, that a majority were at least four sizes too small. The plastic hangers on which the clothes were displayed made an extremely annoying tinkling sound as she tried to riffle through them. An assortment of paper labels and dangling price tabs had been variously stapled, tacked on, glued and stitched into place on the pants so that she found herself snarling out loud as she stomped her way into them. She hissed like an angry cat each time the zippered fastenings caught in her pubic hair when she tried to do them up. And eventually she took to simply ripping them apart while removing them.

  By the time she heard the sounds of approaching security guards and saw the beams of torch light stabbing into the depths of the store, she had managed to surround herself with a mountain of discards. It was not in her nature to feel afraid, so when the two uniformed men approached her, she turned to face them, a towering figure with disshevelled blonde hair and a pair of Levi’s Loose ‘N’ Easy Cargoes ripped to shreds in her hands. In her carefully enunciated though archaic Sanskrit she explained that she was only looking for something suitable to wear and wondered if they would care to help her.