Sita's Ascent Page 10

  ‘After all that happened and we returned to Ayodhya, it was a few months into the reign of Rama. We were all at court. Sugriva had come to visit; Vibhishana was also there. I was gazing on the scene when the court poets were singing of Rama’s glory. Suddenly I felt my eyelids grow very heavy. I saw her—Nidra. She smiled. I nodded. I had forgotten what she looked like or, indeed, who she was. It had been nearly two and a half years since we had made that bargain. She did as promised. But, of course, in her unique way, she came unannounced. To visit me, in style, at court. I felt as if I had lost all control over my body and its senses. It was a dizzy and warm feeling. Almost like being happily inebriated. I was listening to the songs of praise recounting the bravery of the human race and the greatness of man and civilization. I started to smile. My muscles were relaxing. Years of constant vigil and staying awake began to fly away and with it, the tension. I laughed and put my hand to my mouth. The laughter started taking over. I couldn’t suppress it any longer behind my cupped hand. I laughed out loud. It was an unbelievable force that took over and I was deliriously happy. There were murmurs and sounds of shuffling. At first the singers, who were also great Wits, felt complimented. They interpreted my laughter as attentive listening to their puns, conundrums and nuances. But I wasn’t laughing on cue. So they started to look at each other, stumbling over their lines and faltering, and shied away into finishing the recitation as soon as was possible. I tried to explain, but no words would come out, only rippling laughter.

  ‘I saw Rama at first humouring me, but then running out of breath and possibly losing his patience. I could see the laughter was getting to him, because he thought I was laughing at him. He grew reflective. Sugriva, who was offering Rama an ambassadorial tribute, too felt self-conscious and began to reflect on that time when he had regained his kingdom. He wondered if I was laughing at him for being drunk and unprepared with his army, and how we had to wait out the monsoon before he came to our rescue to find Sita. In his embarrassment he pulled at his ear and the earring fell out. It went clattering down on the stone steps, spinning like a top towards Rama’s throne. Sugriva clambered down after it; when he picked it up, his regal but monkeyish awkwardness made me laugh even more.

  ‘Vibhishana, on hearing my laughter, began to think whether he might go down in the chronicles of history as a usurper of Ravana’s kingdom. He kept looking down as if he was considering for the first time how the people of Ayodhya, perhaps even the generations to come, might feel about him becoming the king of Lanka. Was he a good rakshasa or was that really a question to be considered? But my laughter would not show any respect for his doubts and wavering, or indeed his bravery. I could not stop laughing.

  ‘Kausalya Amma was present but began to worry about why she was still alive when her husband was dead.

  ‘Bharata wanted to calm me down as now it was distracting everyone in the Assembly Hall. He was worried I was laughing at him for not having ruled the kingdom well or indeed because he had run the country like a monastery while Rama, Sita and I were away. I could see what he was thinking by watching his expressions, and that made me laugh even louder because he should have known better about how much he was admired; but, at that moment, it was so funny that he could not see it and kept putting himself down.

  ‘Sita at first wondered what had brought this about. Then she wondered if the war was making me feel ill and whether she was worth all the lives lost in the battle. But then she looked straight at me and said, “Lakshmana, it has been fourteen long years. You have not slept as you kept constant vigil over Rama and me. Had it not been for you, we would not have been blessed with sleep. Your supreme sacrifice was that you did not see or speak with Urmilla as she had cast herself into a deep sleep until your return. Now hurry, make up for lost time and be by her side.”

  ‘I could now see Nidra dancing around. I was reeling with laughter and could not help thinking how the goddess of sleep had nothing to do with inertia; sleep was a source of energy. But with her approach everybody becomes cautious, even reflective. I realized that Nidra is the keeper of our secrets, which, in waking, we are not even aware of. When she descends, she churns the ocean of memories that lies deep within, and we start to see ourselves in a way that we have forgotten to when awake. I also remember saluting her because much as I had prayed to her to stay away and thought I had won final control when she did not return, her timing had finally exposed me in public! I was the prince who never slept, who had conquered sleep. That was really something to laugh about—about who was really in control. Sita was the only one who could see that I was dancing with Nidra. She saw my laughter was not intended as a show of superiority and to make others feel uncomfortable. It was about losing control and surrendering.

  ‘It was then that I left the court and slept soundly. How many days passed, I have no count of; there is no chronology in sleep. People, places, events tumble in from top-down and sideways. I had so much dream-time to catch up on. I had not met Rama properly since. I remember waking up and rushing out to meet the hunters. When I returned, it was already too late.

  ‘I heard Rama’s decision. I could not convince him against it. I slept at the most crucial moment of Sita’s life. And when I brought her to the forest and was told to abandon her so Rama could prove to his people that … I don’t know what he wanted to prove; I could not punish her like that. It amounted to deceit. Even if he thought people would come around and want their queen back, how could Rama ignore Sita’s feelings? Or had he taken her for granted? Like most men who expect their wives to fit into a mould! He always told me Sita was different. She was not a woman who expected to be tossed around in the maelstrom of misfortune. He had always insisted she would be the one to light the dawn of a new age for women. Then to hear this decision of his …

  ‘Valmiki was the safest option. I left her there. Even though I could not look back, I could imagine her standing there, one hand clasping the other. Stunned into stone the way Ahalya was. I had always feared the fire in her eyes, like the time she commanded me to light the fire when Rama rebuked her in Lanka. It was worse to imagine she had turned to stone. I knew I could not drive back to the kingdom and face Rama and his dual lives of state and self, stretched like wet leather in the sun. I had nowhere else to go but to die.

  ‘The lightness of the air, of so much sleep after so much wakefulness, made me leap into nothingness. My body flung itself like a tongue in the laughing mouth of the ravine. I found nothing in myself to redeem after what had happened to Sita, and I am left with nothing.’

  Hanuman heard all this through the wheezing and moaning and troubled breathing of Lakshmana.

  Some leaves parted, as a deer munched its way through. Hanuman and the deer gazed at each other as their nostrils quivered to seek the essential scent of the other, distinguishing prey from predator.

  Hanuman

  Hanuman wept. In his stillness he had heard every creak, sigh, groan, trickle, whisper, and seen a flood of images forcing their way through Lakshmana’s story. So great were Hanuman’s powers of understanding breath. He continued anointing Lakshmana’s broken skin with the herb ointment and sealed it with the porous pith of a plantain tree. It became a hammock that generated and cradled new skin; it also looked like a shroud. Hanuman wept his animal-human tears watching Lakshmana’s broken body resisting any kind of treatment. But more than that, he howled from within on hearing the way Lakshmana’s bones were crushed under the weight of his unnecessary guilt.

  The air was humid. Lakshmana was thirsty. He was overwhelmed by the sheer exhaustion of being kept alive over the years by wandering ascetics before Hanuman discovered him. Hanuman’s tears ran down his furry cheek and formed a steady drip and seeped between the cracks of Lakshmana’s battered lips. The salty sweetness of the moisture must have burned; Lakshmana’s broken skin flinched. Hanuman was relieved his body was still responding. He knew all too well the struggle between the tenacious urge to live and the desire to die. The greatest difficulty was
that fiery particle, the mind. It would not let go of memory, association, status and the great pyramid of entombing itself with the loose-footed grasp of sensory things.

  During all that time in which they had known each other, Hanuman had been the real insider to Sita’s story, and only he had known Lakshmana’s place within it. Hanuman could only speak with his eyes. Lakshmana could sense every word. Hanuman could not help feeling pained, and slighted, that Lakshmana did not contact him with the mantra they shared for danger signals ever since the sanjeevini herb incident—especially about the mission to banish Sita. Hanuman would have reasoned with Rama against his fears. Hanuman knew Rama’s fears and loved him in spite of them. He knew Rama to be a wise and compassionate leader. Rama, in his bouts of gloom after being separated from Sita, hovered around thinking the right thought, whether it was solely for the individual, or the collective good, and acting swiftly upon it. Hanuman also sensed Rama’s discomfort with being constantly judged in the public eye, in the present and the future. Rama was often tormented by the possibility that whatever he did would set an example that others would follow, and in varied contexts it could stigmatize him.

  Hanuman also knew Lakshmana would never advise Rama against his darker moments, because that would seem like undermining an older brother’s authority. ‘Even when it was about shedding more light on a subject! Human courtesies often went too far in killing one’s instinct, or do they call it “spontaneity”?’ thought Hanuman. But more than that, Hanuman could not bear to see Lakshmana’s life ebbing away because he mistakenly burdened himself with the guilt of being the cause of Sita’s abduction.

  Hanuman could see deeper under the layers of stories that would be chronicled and told for ages to come, that the truth lay in Lakshmana’s reticence. Hanuman was a pioneer in espionage in Sugriva’s kingdom, and he could detect that in Lakshmana’s case, it wasn’t the miscalculation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; it was about a feeling of rejection and loss ever since that moment that paved the way for the abduction.

  Lakshmana’s breathing was all Hanuman needed to map the dark forest of the invalid’s being. In fact, he was reconstructing the fibre of his skin cell by cell. It was the word ‘abduction’ that seemed to rankle Lakshmana the most. Hanuman wondered if facing the truth was what was holding him back. ‘Abduction’ was a word amongst humans that threw them into a black hole of confusion, fear, despair and hatred. There was a collective view of defining and thinking about abduction. Abduction carried the weight of someone being taken against their will, and yet it was also about surrendering against their will.

  All those years ago, that fatal afternoon, the golden deer had flitted into the thick of the forest with Rama determined to capture it for Sita. He was undecided at first, but Sita turned on him and said: ‘That deer could be our souvenir of all this time that we’ve spent in the forest. I’ve never asked anything of you these last thirteen years, and even this one thing seems so difficult, is it?… Oh! What’s the use! That enchanting deer has fled!’ The last thing Rama uttered was: ‘Lakshmana, make sure Sita comes to no harm! I will return.’

  After a while, following the tunnel of shrieks and wails of birds and monkeys, the afternoon was wrenched apart by terrifying cries in what sounded like Rama’s voice. Lakshmana saw how distraught Sita became when she heard Rama’s voice; she was consumed by her concern for Rama. She looked so vulnerable, without a sense of her self. In that shining moment he saw the totality of Rama and Sita’s love, which transcended boundaries of body and space. It was an epiphany that washed through him like a wave buoying him from his finite body to an immersion in infinity. Something in Lakshmana’s expression indicated his longing to belong to that infinity. He sighed—an expression of wonder at having witnessed something so sublime. Sita turned as she heard him sigh and was distracted by his look of pain and longing. She coded another signal. Longing for the infinite, translated through his finite body, was read by Sita as temporal desire. The infinity that Lakshmana had perceived in Sita was being manifested through a woman’s body experiencing loss, fear, love and anger. As Sita’s eyes flashed with anger, Lakshmana saw her infinity merging and constricting itself into the finite. ‘Is this the time you have found to look at me?’ was her first utterance. He was speechless. What had at first enraptured him now eroded into something so base. Yet, both were expressions of the same body. He now felt abducted by a power greater than himself and it seemed he was surrendering himself to it against his will. His sense of loss brought his characteristic impatience to the surface, and in an act of love and despair he drew the lakshman rekha, a laser circle to protect Sita as long as she stayed within its circumference.

  When he ran towards Rama, his thoughts were flying in all directions, churning the years of selfhood that he had created. So, when he returned with Rama to encounter the reality of Sita’s abduction, he was totally consumed by a wave of guilt. It was not because of what had happened, but by the tangible sense of having been abducted by something beyond him and having become powerless. Sita had seen through it, and now Hanuman could sense through his pulse how deeply that anguish had filtered into Lakshmana’s being; Hanuman could hear it in his very breathing. Lakshmana always felt second best and more so when Hanuman came into the frame of the relationship between the brothers, and that much more did he feel abducted by guilt for leaving Sita alone. Rama never once rebuked Lakshmana, and that weighed heavily too. Hanuman alone knew the extent of Rama’s love for Lakshmana.

  The deer that was peering at Hanuman gained confidence and came closer. Hanuman looked into its past lives and discerned that in none of them was it a rakshasa, or capable of shape-shifting. ‘But what of Sita, where could she be now?’ he thought.

  Hanuman had learnt over the years that if one had to go in search of something, even a spiritual quest, it had to be done by following some clues, however random they seemed. It was only after the mission had begun that he could find the reason or purpose behind the quest. For him, the first thing was to know the quality of the person or the quest that he was seeking. When he went to seek Sita in Lanka it was clearly because of his love of Rama that he set out on that mission. When he met Sita, he was ready to turn Lanka upside down for the suffering that Ravana had caused her. Hanuman had seen Sita the way no one else had, or could. In captivity too she was brave, never giving in to Ravana’s manipulative logic, shape-shifting and delusions. She had shared her anguish about the state of corruption that was embedded in everyone who visited her. ‘If this way of being takes over, what will become of the future?’ she had sighed when they both sat under that tree in Asokavan.

  He thought of the three symbols associated with Sita. The first was the iron bow granted by Shiva. It was impossibly large, unwieldy and sure to fail any contestant—human, animal or divine. But Sita having discovered it in the vegetable garden was able to pluck it out like a weed from the earth. He marvelled at how she knew the real trick—it wasn’t about physical strength. It was about sheer mental and spiritual grit. Determination. That was the magic formula in Shiva’s bow. Not for acclaim or physical prowess but for the accomplishment of the task at hand. Hanuman, who was an avatar of Shiva born to Anjani and Kesari, knew this.

  The second symbol was the ring that Sita had given Rama when they had married. The gem was a deep forest-green emerald and the gold filigree around the band held an inscription which read:

  My earth, my moon, my sun. Rama, my full circle.

  After the war, even after that fateful agnipariksha fire trial, Rama continued to wear the ring. Hanuman would often catch him musing at sunset. He would press it close to his lip as if Sita’s ring held his life in its eternal circle.

  ‘Why then would Rama make this preposterous decision? Dirt can cover gold, but it will not affect its purity. On the other hand, doubt, like a black speck within a diamond cannot be removed …’ Hanuman twisted and turned many arguments till his head started to spin.

  The third symbol was the scrap
of Sita’s sari that he had preserved as a relic. He had never had the time to ask her whether she had torn it as a clue for Rama to come in search of her when she was being carried away; or whether Ravana in his scramble tore it and it fell; or indeed when the aerial chariot was rising in the air and Jatayu challenged Ravana mid-air, the sari got ripped by the branch of a tree and slid down with the heavy rains that followed? Did it matter that it would never be known?

  Hanuman placed Lakshmana’s crushed body in a hammock created of pith, soft grass and feathers, leaves and abandoned bird-nests. He ensured that the hammock was suspended between the sturdy branches of two low-lying boughs and anointed him with a powerful mantra so no beast or human would attack him. Hanuman was on a mission. He decided to seek Valmiki. He wanted to know the truth—why does human understanding in such ideal relationships get corrupted, and how does it happen?

  The important thing was to tell Sita’s story. When he sat with her in Asokavan in Lanka, Hanuman had offered to end her trials by taking her back to Rama. But she was insistent that he return to Rama alone, with her fervent conviction. ‘It’s not about me,’ she had said. ‘Rama and Ravana have to face each other. Rama is single-minded and wedded to the truth. Ravana has myriads of distractions, and he continues to delude himself that power is the real source of knowledge. He believes that corrupting power to suit his own ends will make him immortal. My returning with you would be “safe”. But what would Rama have signalled to the rest of the world? I sometimes wish we were down to earth in our aspirations. But no, it’s not enough. Things have to be stirred at the very root. To me, this is about my abduction, yes, but it is also about being avenged. Why should anyone, human or animal, be used as a pawn? Why am I a pawn in this game of creating alliances and oppositions between forces? Why is the focus a woman’s vulnerability? Why not her strength as a bargaining power for peace—even if by means of war?