Wise, noble words of inspiration. Rama looked down at the veritable sea of vanars on one side and the army of bears on the other side with trepidation. He hardly knew where to search within himself for suitable things to say. His body—not just his mind, heart and soul, but his entire being—ached for his lost wife. Losing a limb in battle might have been less painful. Never a willing speaker, he now sometimes went days without saying a single word. He was tired, drained from the long weeks since Sita’s abduction, barely able to find respite at night from the hellish visions that tormented him, consumed by guilt and remorse. And when he struggled with cares of the day, worries assaulted him on every side. There was Lakshman’s constant griping and nagging about the inefficacy of the vanars as a fighting force, the impossibility of crossing the ocean, their utter lack of knowledge of what size of force or defenses Ravana possessed in Lanka, what sorcerous asura maya he might unleash against the innocent vanars who had never seen so much as a seer levitating. A thousand, thousand worries, and little succour to be found.
But one look at Hanuman’s face, so filled with pride at being here, on this rocky hilltop beside Rama and Lakshman, at having brought to Rama such a vast gathering of his race, and such a great bear army, and he knew he must fulfil the vanar’s wish. All those waiting vanars and bears down there, hushing each other now as Hanuman’s associates and their generals passed on the word that the mortal king was about to issue a pravachan. King. That itself showed how deep Hanuman’s faith and loyalty lay. Rama was hardly a king. A prince in exile, yes. The throne of Ayodhya awaited his return from banishment, no doubt. But to Hanuman and the vanars—and presumably the bears as well—who followed him now, he was already King Rama. Rightful master of the throne of the Kosala nation. He glanced down this way, then that, still unable to assimilate the sheer magnitude of the force that Hanuman had gathered in so short a time. Truly, some force above in Swargaloka must support his cause to enable the raising of such
a vast army in a few weeks. He wondered if in some age past, mighty Brahma himself had indeed ordained
the other devas with the task of populating Prithvi the earth with such multitudes for just such a day. So that he, Rama, could raise an army to go seek out and regain his stolen wife.
An army that was gazing up adoringly, almost reverentially, awaiting his next words as eagerly as shishyas awaited their guru’s words of wisdom at a forest kul. Or as keenly as disciples awaited their master’s pravachan.
A pravachan? That was something venerable sages issued. Religious proclamations, divinely received knowledge, speeches made by his fabled forebears, those mythic heroes of yore: Manu Lawmaker, regarded by some as seedsower of the entire mortal race. Surya, the sun god himself, taking human avatar to combat evil in the mortal realm. Harishchandra, the benevolent king who gave away all his worldly possessions rather than deny any who asked for alms. Raghu. His own great father, Dasaratha. These brave and honourable vanars deserved a leader of that stature. A demigod-like personality. A divinely ordained hero. A deva on earth. Or at the very least, an avatar of Vishnu.
Instead, he stood here, wind-buffeted, sun-baked, a weary, heartbroken, care-burdened creature, groping for words, searching for something to say, anything that sounded inspiring. Not a deva. Not even an avatar. Just a man.
A man bent low by the weight of long exile and recent loss. Bone-tired, battle-weary, soul-sick.
Yet even as the enormous gathering waited patiently in almost reverential silence, something rose within his heart, slowly, like a submerged lotus floating back to the top of a pond, seeking the warmth of sunlight.
What was it Lakshman had said? Rama, you could stoke a spark into a fire even in a winter storm. Words to that effect. Yes, it was true, the one thing that kept him going was faith. Utter and absolute, unshakeable. For what else did he possess now? If not faith? It was all that drove him on, kept him alive, made him eat to sustain himself, even though every morsel seemed like it had been washed of all taste and nourishment, as if the very water he drank, be it from the purest glacial spring, tasted foul and tainted by some nameless dead animal’s corpse. Faith was his touchstone, his whetstone, his millstone. His curse, his sustenance, his salvation. He could not shed it even if he tried. He would raise an army. He would go to Lanka. He would seek out Sita, dead or alive. It did not matter if he succeeded in his aims or not, if Sita were alive or no—or worse. All that mattered was that he had set his mind to a purpose and he would not rest or turn away until that purpose was fulfilled. That was what drove him. How could he put such a thing into words? How could he describe the love that he felt for Sita? The duty that demanded he seek her out and rescue her, no matter what the cost, or the odds. Not duty, for that was a given thing, a choice made. Dharma. Dharma was the centre of his faith. It was an iron bond welded to the very spurs of his skeleton. Like the hilt of his sword. The string of a bow. Dharma defined him, made him, shaped him. And dharma demanded that he do this and not let anything stand in the way of his doing it. Dharma. And yes, love. Love. Above all, love.
Suddenly, the sun was hot on his cheeks, and he found his eyes wet. He looked around and saw the still faces of Lakshman and Hanuman. Turned the other way and saw the vanars on the slope, already calling out communications in the same primitive vanar tongue. Heard the passing on of the message in waves across the vanar sena below. And through the masses of the bear army as well. Saw the armies respond, not with the ulullating exultation and chuffing grunts they had emitted earlier, but with white noise. A silence so deafening, that the world seemed stopped, held still. The breeze moved the leaves in the trees below, the sun shone, seagulls flew calling indignantly at the usurpation of their habitat, and Rama realised that he had not merely been thinking those thoughts, that he had spoken them aloud, had shared with the vanars his innermost feelings, doubts, despair, and hopes.
Then, he heard Hanuman’s voice speak into the silence. The vanar’s voice betrayed his own emotions, and without looking, Rama could tell that Hanuman had tears running down his distended vanar cheeks too. For that much had not changed. Outwardly he had become a giant instead of the puny stripling he had been at Rishimukha, but at heart, Hanuman had always been a giant. And that too-large heart cried out in its mighty breast now, answering Rama’s clarion call. Hanuman spoke three simple words. Rama did not know if all the vanar tribe-nations and the bear nations even understood the first two of those three words. But Hanuman spoke them anyway, and the vanars and the bears passed them on, and the vanar army and the bear army repeated them to their comrades behind until every last vanar and bear soldier for miles around had heard the syllables.
And then with one voice, both armies replied. With a cry so resounding that the world itself was overwhelmed by the tidal wave of sound. They said the phrase once, then repeated it, then again, and again, and again. Until Rama saw Hanuman raising his arms and chanting the words aloud, and Lakshman beside him, a grim death’s-face grimace on his face, saying them too, albeit softly, and the multitudes below chanting them, chanting them, chanting them.
He had heard the words spoken before, with respect to those heroes of yore who undertook terrible vows and then suffered great hardship to enact those same vows. It was a phrase that was used for the rarest of rare, those who dared to undertake the most self-penalising of missions and then would not be thwarted from seeing them through to the very end.
Maryada Purshottam.
One Who Fulfils His Oath.
But they were shouting it with his name attached. He was the one who had taken this great and terrible oath, placed his feet upon an impossible path, and now must follow it through to the very end.
Maryada Purshottam Rama. Rama, Fulfiller of Oaths.
He turned and faced the ocean. That was where his path lay now. He would have to walk on water to cross it. He raised his arms and the armies behind him raised their arms as well, issuing a cry that was part exultation, part cheer, and part battle cry.
SEVEN
It was an odd gathering that sat in a rough semicircle in the sand around the black rock on which Rama and Lakshman were perched. They were on the rim of the beach, about a mile or so north of the blackrock rise on which Rama had made the speech. The sun was baking the sand only yards away, but they were seated in the cool leafy shade of a grove of palm trees. When they had found the spot and decided it would be suited to their purpose, the bears had stopped and peered dubiously up into the shade of the close-growing palms, and Lakshman had asked them what they were looking for.
‘Bats,’ Jambavan had replied. The great black had a way of growling that was intimidating, especially to the vanars. Rama had noticed how most vanars kept their distance from most of the bears, but all of them kept twice the distance from Jambavan himself. Apparently, Hanuman whispered to him discreetly in response to his query, the vanars believed that the king of bears was wont to swallow vanars up whole on a whimsy. Like most vanar superstitions, Rama guessed that this one probably had its origin in some mother’s warning to babies in order to get them to sleep—‘younguns who play at night get eaten whole by the king of bears’—but he had no doubt that it suited Jambavan to let the rumour live and thrive. The fact that Jambavan was an oak of a creature, towering a good yard higher than Rama himself, and almost twice as high as most vanars, added to the aura. But it was also a species thing: the bears seemed willing to tolerate vanars, but clearly considered themselves far superior in the natural order of things. As Lakshman noted quietly in his ear, that was yet another factor that would have to be taken into account when deploying this vast unwieldy amalgam of an army.
‘Bats?’ Lakshman had replied incredulously, peering up at the tops of the tall, swaying palms. ‘What would bats be doing here?’ He looked up and down the blindingly bright sunlit beach—the last of the sea-mist had dissipated long since. ‘They live in caves deep in mountains, don’t they? Not in sunny places like this.’
Jambavan looked down his snout at Lakshman as if pondering the relative intelligence of their species. Then, with a visible effort at patience: ‘There are no caves for yojanas around here, brer-Lakshman. Yet there are flying insects by the millions, nay, hundreds and thousands of millions. And where there are flying insects, there are always bats.’ He jerked his snout upwards. ‘Those trees are full of ripe sweetheads and stickyfruit. Even a human can scent them, I expect.’
Lakshman blinked, then Rama saw his face clear as he managed to mentally translate the last into human-intelligible terms—coconuts and dates. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘And coconuts and dates are sweet so they attract fruit flies and other flying insects, and so the bats come to eat the flying insects. But that would be at night, not in bright daylight, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but by day, the wretched things sleep. So they hang in the palms, and fly at night, eating their fill of insects. A place such as this is a bat’s paradise.’ He looked back at the direction of the beach and the mile-distant blackrock ridge whence they had come, and sighed. ‘But it is shady, I warrant, and it will be suitable for our purposes. Therefore, we may seat ourselves here for the present. As long as we move to alternate locations before sundown, for that is when the wretched fur-wetters awaken. I would bet my left claws there are more bats up there in those trees than grains of sand on that beach.’
Lakshman looked as if he doubted there could be more bats anywhere than sand on any beach, but thankfully he kept his argument to himself. Rama had already had to play mediator to a number of small but needless arguments about points of protocol and custom. If he understood anything about such matters, those little differences would blossom into fullblown debates before the war was done. But for now, he only wished to learn a little more about his newfound comrades and allies. Especially the bears. He knew how he had won the loyalty of the vanars, but he still did not understand why an entire race of creatures unfamiliar to him would suddenly rise up in support of his cause.
They found a clearing between the allegedly bat-infested palms that was wide enough to accommodate the whole company—there were some twenty in all, by Rama’s quick count—and some of Hanuman’s vanars cleared away the fallen fronds and branches and rotten coconuts. After they were seated, they were brought fruit and freshly broken coconuts to eat. The bears had carried urns of honey with them, and Jambavan’s associates Kambunara and Tiruvalli dipped their immense paws into the urns and doled out generous dollops of the thick viscous stuff to each one, repeating proudly how this was the finest honey on all the planets because they had scoured the entire universe to find the special bees that produced it.
Nobody dared ask how bears travelled from planet to planet, nor how it was that bees lived in those other worlds, but the honey was truly delicious. It put Rama in mind of the honey and fish that he, Sita and Lakshman had been fed by Guha, lord of the Nisadas, in the forest on the banks of the Ganga, soon after the start of their exile. He remembered feeding Sita honeyed fish and she feeding him, beneath the overarching, all-embracing foliage of that gigantic banyan tree, the legendary walking tree, Nyagrodha. The taste of that sweetwater fish, so soft that its flesh melted like snowflakes in his mouth, and the warmth of Sita’s presence by his side, all came to him as clearly as if it were here and now, and she were here by his side, waiting patiently for him to finish his mouthful so she could feed him another.
He turned to look in that direction, almost expecting her to be there. But there was only Lakshman, who glanced up at him from his sparingly eaten honeyed fruit and seemed to sense at once that he was seeking out Sita. Lakshman put his leaf-plate aside and sat hunched, staring out through a gap between palm trunks at the sunlit ocean, his eyes inscrutable. Rama tried to bury the heaviness in his chest with another mouthful or two, then put his own unfinished meal aside as well.
‘Friends,’ he said softly, his voice carrying easily to them all in the quiet shade of the grove. Outside on the beach, several of Hanuman’s vanars and Jambavan’s bears kept the large numbers of their curious compatriots away from the grove. Rama had requested this, explaining carefully that it was not because he did not wish the rest to know what they spoke of here, but because they must themselves reach some consensus before involving the rest in their plans, lest confusion reign. Both races had agreed without much fuss, understanding instinctively that these were circumstances that called for special behaviour, and yielding easily and instantly to Rama’s wishes. ‘I have already thanked you all collectively for joining this campaign. Yet allow me to do so once more. It is a great, invaluable service you are rendering unto me and I do not know how I will ever repay you.’
Jambavan stirred noisily, spitting out seeds of some fruit—a custard apple, one of Rama’s own favourites, and because of which Sita, who had always thought she hated it, had agreed to try again and come to enjoy even more than he did, so much so that he had taken to teasing her by calling it sitaphal, literally Sita’s fruit. The bear king spat the seeds into his own paw, in a manner that even Rama could tell was exceedingly polite for bears who were otherwise wont to spew seeds out at random as they ate, not caring where or upon whom they might fall, and growled, ‘It is you who do us a service, Rama. We have waited many thousands of years to return the great favour you rendered unto us.’
Rama was taken aback. ‘I do not understand you, my friend. Did you say many thousands of years? I am barely thirty
years of age myself.’
‘Nonsense, Rama,’ Jambavan said gruffly in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘You have existed for countless millennia and will exist for many millennia to come yet. You were here upon earth in many different forms and this form you now choose to garb yourself with is only the newest one of all. But we see beyond the physical and discern the personage within, for we are oathbound to you.’
Rama looked around at the company, nonplussed. He did not know what to make of Jambavan’s mystifying words.
Lakshman was staring at the bear king like a man poleaxed. Angad and all the vanars were eating quietly, neither disturbed nor confused by the bear king’s extraordinary outburst. Rama looked at Susena, Satabali, Nila, Vikata in turn and saw nothing in their faces to help him. He then looked at the other vanars, many of whom had arrived with Hanuman and had been introduced to himself only hours earlier—Gaja, Gavaksa, Sarabha, Gandhamadana, Mainda, and Dvivida—but they were all eating as if nothing unusual had occurred. He looked to the bears, Timbuvalli, Kambunara, Shamasthan, Parithran, Jagadasthi, and Gyana, but they were watching him so intently that he could not bear their gaze and looked around again. His eyes fell on Hanuman then, and there he found something. A trace of reassurance. Of solemn dignity. Clearly, Hanuman understood what Jambavan had spoken of and had been expecting him to say such things.
‘Hanuman,’ Rama asked. ‘What does Jambavan mean?’
Hanuman set his leaf-plate aside. Like the two mortals, he had hardly touched his food. All the others were still relishing their victuals. ‘Rama,’ he said gently. ‘You must understand, the bears are a wise and ancient race, and they do not regard the world as you mortals do. Their concepts and precepts are very different from your own.’
‘We follow the old ways,’ Jambavan said. ‘The true ways. You ought to understand, Rama. You are a soldier of dharma. That is the essence of our beliefs. Dharma.’
RAMAYANA Part 3_PRINCE AT WAR Page 9
