Sita's Ascent Page 3

  ‘Oh, please, please.’ The old man could stand no longer. He knelt and said, ‘Don’t say that, we brought her up with the utmost care. She looks upon Sitadevi as her protector!’ He broke down, choked by grief.

  The son-in-law snarled. ‘Well, I believe in honour in the old way, not like our king. Just look at him. What face does he have among men? He just took his wife back after she had been kept by Ravana for more than a year! Who knows what happened there? Get out of my way, you old fool!’ And the old man stumbled, splayed face down, crying in the darkness and the wet mud. A dislodged stone scurried into the water with a splash.

  Urmilla felt a pang of pity for the old man. Disgusted by the son-in-law’s attitude, she returned to her apartments, resolving to seek the fellow out and knock some sense into his head. She was incensed. So these rumours were still flying about? Rumour and public opinion were faceless enemies, she thought. She would talk it over with Lakshmana. How could she tell Rama and Sita? She decided she would wait till Sita returned from her visit to the hermitage. Sita’s trip was planned for the next day and Lakshmana was to escort her to the forest.

  By the time Sita and Lakshmana left for the forest, Urmilla had begun to get her servants to interrogate all the dhobis in the area. She had to be discreet. She asked them to find out how many dhobis’ daughters had been married over the last few months.

  Because of this, she missed her daily routine of visiting Sita with soaked almonds and having their daily chat. ‘It won’t be long, Sita will be back by Dasami. There will be so much to catch up on. Meanwhile, Lakshmana will bring me news about her,’ she consoled herself. As the still night progressed, she kept reliving the scene she had witnessed in the fading light the day before. What she did not know was that someone else had been there too. She had only heard the splash of water.

  Her lids were heavy, but, during all these years, she had begun to dream with her eyes wide open. She composed poetry about waiting. She had begun a way of communicating with Lakshmana through her spirit. In that arc of fourteen years, when both were exiled from each other, he too communicated with her. But tonight sleep descended, and there was silence.

  Rama

  Rama lost his foothold. A stone had got dislodged and Rama could not break its fall. It bounced. With the sheer volition of its speed matched by its weight, the force of gravity and the downward slope of the bank, the stone made a splash—the way actions create consequences.

  Rama had stopped by the grove of fragrant mango trees as he would whenever there was an opportunity to watch the sunset. The place was unchanged since the time he and his brothers used to swing from the branches as Dasaratha, their father, watched over them. Like a sports instructor, their father would assess which son had stronger arms while swinging from the branches, who was more nimble-footed, running along a high branch like a tightrope walker, and then invent new games. After the climbing, jumping, rolling and chasing, the boys would be led by Dasaratha to sit on the bank and watch what he called ‘the miracle of each and every day’, the sunset. Once he held Rama close and said, ‘Look how the sun is sinking in the west. When you see that big ball of red nearly half gone, then wish with all your heart for the thing you want, and it will come true. You know why? Because that is the fire point, the purest moment. The sun is fire; you will never know anything more intense and pure than that!’ Rama, whose name signified ‘moving towards’, remembered it, not for his father’s romantic science, but for the moment when, like at the close of day all things point to night, he felt that closeness with his brothers, his life being swathed by the love and guardianship of an admirable father and accomplished king. Returning to the grove, often without Sita, was a remembrance of things past, when life was founded on the magic of innocence and wonder. Standing there, with the ghosts of the past reconciled, watching the sunset was an elixir for daily renewal. Even if things went wrong, he found new resolve by gazing at these sunsets. The blaze of light before it was consumed by night brought hope that the sun would rise the next day, and what was left incomplete could be put right. Every sunset was different. Some days it was wide and clear and the fireball descending from gold to crimson to deep red would simmer with its heat waves as it slipped into the horizon. In that instant, the light changed the landscape. First illuminating every object, then, as the blaze faded, lighting the trees, buildings, livestock, people, everything seemed to be sculpted of ebony. On other days, clouds splayed the light across all directions and became iconic of the power that gave life. Its light touched everything; it was the symbol of royalty. To Rama, in his wheel of life—a continuous play of unanticipated shocks—the sun was the only constant. Gazing at the sun he would recall the strands of poems from the Isha Upanishad:

  The face of the truth is hidden by thy golden orb, O sun.

  That do thou remove, in order that I who am devoted to truth may behold its glory.

  O Nourisher, only seer, controller of all—O illumining sun, fountain of life for all creatures—withhold thy light, gather together thy rays. May I behold through thy grace thy most blessed form.

  The Being that dwells therein—even that Being am I.

  Sita had been planning her trip to the forest for the next morning and the household was in preparation for months since she had announced it. It was her way of offering thanks to the friends in the forest and to Valmiki before she gave birth, as she knew her life would take a different turn when she came back. She would settle into the role of a mother, wife and queen. Rama, too, felt it was a good idea. Sita’s mother had died of grief on hearing about Sita’s abduction, muttering in her last breath, ‘What will people say?’ Now Valmiki and the forest were Sita’s family. Rama understood her need for parental warmth.

  The evening before Sita’s departure he couldn’t resist stopping by the grove on his way from court. The sun was setting and this time he really had something to wish for. Not so much to wish for as to be grateful for. Sita was back in his life, and each day dissolved one more layer of caution and reserve till hopefully, one day, they would return to their former selves, and the trust they shared when they married would be restored. After fourteen years they were going to have a child. All those years in exile, they had entwined themselves in each other’s thoughts and could not tell each other apart. But the year that Sita was abducted, so many new worlds came into existence. Rama met Hanuman and that friendship shaped tangible worlds, like armies, but also intangible ones like courage and unfailing service.

  That was when Rama heard voices. He drew back under the shade of a tree. The father-in-law and son-in-law were too involved in their argument to notice they were being watched. Rama was about to intervene, not as a king handing out justice, but as a mediator, enabling each party to see the other’s point of view and arriving at a reconciliation before a solution. It had won him a place in the hearts of everyone he had met in his years of exile. He found it was the best way of knowing a case and understanding his people even after he returned to court and was crowned king.

  But at the mention of Sita, a cold pang of fear clutched his heart. The son-in-law’s snarl kept ringing in his head: ‘Well, I believe in honour in the old way, not like our king … He just took his wife back after she had been kept by Ravana for more than a year! Who knows what happened there?’ Rama’s legs were like stone pillars, his arms heavy boulders and his tongue a frozen river. A part of him became a wild beast, ready to bash the young man into a pulp. Not kill him, because the ensuing silence would only magnify the words the murdered man had uttered, as they would remain suspended in the air. Another part of Rama was baying like a wounded animal at the sight of its mate gorged by other animals. Every fibre in Rama’s body tingled with rage as he stretched and tightened the fabric of rationality, like damp leather on the ring of a drum. He kept tapping and toning his mind with discursive thoughts of ethics, purpose, governance, tradition and the state, including the collective good. No mantras alleviated the pain screaming in and tearing at his heart.

>   What the son-in-law said hung like spit in the air and the old man, broken by the ammunition of words, was splayed on the bank beating his fists as his tears and saliva mixed with the mud. Rama walked away and the stone tumbled from its nest of roots. It splashed and formed widening rings as it plunged to the bottom of the palace’s lotus pond. Each of the three men had reached their thresholds of endurance. In the scheme of things to come, what began as a domestic quarrel in a washerman’s hut outside the palace would create ever-widening rings of influence in the royal household, in turn affecting the course of history.

  Rama returned to his palace trembling. He went straight to his map room, avoiding the main entrance. He sent word through his trusted courtier for Lakshmana to meet him immediately. He knew this was difficult as Lakshmana was on a secret-service mission with hunters, who acted as the king’s spies, and there was no way of contacting him until he returned at night. Dismissing all his servants Rama decided to be alone. He would wait. However long that took. He knew what it meant to wait. He also knew that when waiting, one’s thoughts and feelings rushed like a river, breaking the banks and shifting the vantage points of a landscape.

  He began unfurling the scrolls of new maps that defined the boundaries of his kingdom and those of his neighbours. So far there had been no disputes, and it was due to the diligence of Bharata who, over the years of Rama’s exile, had served the kingdom and the domestic needs of its people with great attention to detail. Thoughts of expansion, even through trade, were not part of Bharata’s scheme. In fact, Bharata had no ambition to rule and had done so only on Rama’s insistence. On his return and after the coronation, Rama was advised that in the foreseeable future there would be shortages of natural and other resources within the kingdom. Unless there was some kind of expansion of territories that provided those resources, Ayodhya would become dependent; a dependent kingdom is vulnerable to attack. The lines on the map were blurring. Rama’s dilemma was now concrete: should he focus on the external demands of the state before he weeded out the internal discontent among his people? Both made the kingdom, his state, vulnerable.

  He had always believed that the state and the individual functioned like the human heart—a circulation system of codes formed by people’s consent and well communicated at all levels—where each enabled the other to perform at optimum level. What was in the minds of individuals eventually influenced collective action. It came to be written ‘to each according to his ability’—that was the building block of the social constitution. The principle was a good one. Based on the human anatomy, limbs and organs dispersed functions that were carried out as a unified action of the body.

  A thought was an atom. It fuelled energy that could be used either way—for darkness or light. He had experienced it during exile, wandering and meeting all kinds of people. He knew his people and their circumstances. They entrusted him to uphold not only what was materially beneficial to them but also the spiritual goal and purpose in life—that which made life bearable amidst vicissitudes. Rama believed in an open channel of communication with his people, not so much to please them as to contextualize the legislation of each individual’s dharma—or right action. What nourished the individual would replenish the state. Rama had brought about considerable change from his father’s time—the most significant of which was reserving the love and honour of one wife.

  Hearing the washerman hurl such abuse in the name of Sita both dismayed and enraged him. Had she not proved her mettle in that trial by fire? Did he not arrange it so everyone could see with their own eyes what he knew her to be? And how much had been at stake—including the prospect of losing her completely—when he had uttered those words. They had sounded so strange on his tongue: ‘Sita! Ravana is dead. You are free to go now.’ And then the horror lurched again. Was Ravana really dead? How he still continued to cause havoc! Ravana was a great creator of illusions. What if these shards of doubt were also his creation? These thoughts like fine crystals of poison were foreign to Rama, but, unnoticed by him, they dissolved in his mind. And now Sita was with child. Was that an illusion as well? Was Ravana hovering to see that if not in life, then by his death he could separate Rama and Sita? How intense must be the power of his love for Sita.

  Rama knew that Sita never uttered the name Ravana. He had accepted her silence as her way of recovering from that traumatic captivity. He knew from the depth of his being that Sita was true to him, as Rama knew he was true to her. They were two bodies entwined around one soul. Did he not see how her eyes blazed when for one brief instant she stood apart from him at the trial of fire—that she would give up her life were she to be separated from his belief in her? Did she not say ‘Ra and Ma were the only two syllables I knew in all my time in captivity; it was all my breath uttered when I inhaled, exhaled and inhaled again; it was Rama who kept me alive’? Then why was this shadow still looming over them?

  That day when he found Sita beside her dowry chest, he saw the look in her eyes; she could feel the hurt that overwhelmed him for one blinding moment. She had been about to speak, but he turned to go. Even then he had heard her say ‘Rama …’, caught mid-sentence, and he hadn’t stayed to listen. Now the moment had passed, and he had decided on a different course of action.

  Sita was tinkling the little bell for the evening aarti. The musical instruments were being tuned, and Rama could hear the drum throbbing like a heartbeat. He calmly strode past the columns and entered the hall as everyone faced the ancestral deities and Sita waved the lamps. The air was thick with the fragrance of sandalwood. The lead sang in perfect pitch and rhythm. She led and the chorus followed, all hearts and minds singing in unison. Rama and Sita looked at each other for one moment as the subjects thanked the ancestral gods for their king and their queen. Sita smiled such a heavenly smile; a warm wave of love and reassurance washed over him.

  After the evening meal Rama spent some time with Sita who told him about the allocation of gifts for the journey. He then returned to his map room before retiring. Lakshmana was waiting. The attendants knew that when the brothers met, they had to be left alone. When the last footfall was heard fading away, Lakshmana pulled out the palm-leaf message he had received and looked at Rama, ‘What does this mean?’

  ‘You do know we are leaving tomorrow?’ Rama came forward to calm Lakshmana as he had done for all the years he had known him.

  ‘No, Rama. I cannot understand you. You who have understood the essence of the Upanishads, who seek the truth in all things? Rama, it was you who taught me that Brahman is in everything. Not just the eye but in what makes one see. Not just the strength in one’s arms and legs but the impulse that makes them move. Not just the thinking of our thoughts but the essence of how we make them dark or bright. Not just the heart as a vital organ but as one that contains a luminous flower; to know that it holds the eternal self, which is the size of a thumb. You know the subtle currents of the seventy-three nerves that rest at sleep to wake in the finite world. You know the difference between dreaming and waking, and the wakeful eternal. All this, in the darkest times, you have breathed in words more eloquent than song. All this is contained in you. With my eyes and heart I have seen and lived and believed this of you. Even Hanuman held that the love Sita and you have for each other is beyond all things finite, the embodiment of all ideals. That love kept us wakeful during our exile to what is good and what leads to evil. Rama, listen to me. Above all, people know that you see Brahman, shining like a million sunsets when you meditate. You are the embodiment of Brahman, like a profound artist touched by the genius of play and awakening, who can see the birth of new life in dead wood. Why are you falling prey to rumour? You are above this!’

  ‘This is not rumour. It is about challenging power with principle. If I don’t put myself through this test, how will everyone know that we are all subject to the principle. Can’t you see, we are all bound by the rules?

  ‘Even the infinite is contained in the finite. If we are to bring about change then we have to take
the first step. People will learn to see the truth. Ideals at all cost must be held high. Did we not endure so much because we believed in unravelling the ultimate potential of what makes the human divine? Whoever we are, sacrifice is inevitable.’

  ‘But you cannot wash away what everyone is thinking and does not dare to say. It’s impossible. Will your action not prove that Sita is guilty? And Sita? Does she know she is at the centre of this?’

  ‘She is central to everything. She will understand,’ said Rama conclusively.

  When Rama returned to his apartments, Sita was asleep. He lay down beside her. She stirred and in her sleep murmured his name. He held her close, placing his hand on her belly. The foetus was kicking. Rama cupped his hand, holding on to the movement of life before birth; consciousness of what was unconscious. Sita was his. How could he ever doubt that? Ravana created his delusions, but Sita could never be swayed. Of that Rama was certain. Whatever the price, all he wanted was for his people to see her the way she really was.

  Valmiki

  Valmiki had taken to sweeping of late. Sweeping around his hut, and then in a circle defining the hermitage. He swept the clearing in front of the huts that was for visiting ascetics. In the centre of the clearing was a step-high square, and another angled square on top of it making a base in the shape of an eight-point star for lighting the fire. Branches, logs, twigs, dried leaves were all stacked beyond the circle, to the right. A wooden cauldron and terracotta pots and pitchers were beside the stack. Two goats and a cow and her calf sat at the far end facing the back of the dwellings.

  Valmiki swept leaves, seeds, crushed fruit, bird droppings, peacock feathers, snail shells, snake skins, weeds, worms, anything that his broom—made from a brush of thorny leaves and twigs tied to a branch—could find in its path.