Sita's Ascent Read online

  The brave new arrival into the world was dependent on the ripening of all body cells. Sita’s body was ready to release this configuration of a complete body from a dark, warm, fluid interior to an exterior of air and light. The head coming out through a contracting and expanding cave-shaped ring of flesh. For the tiny body, its eyes shut tight, it was sound alone that marked the first difference between the experience of the interior and the exterior.

  What a whirr, so different from the sound of the eternal swimming. Only later would he come to know they were human voices crying, singing and cheering, happy and exhausted. Then a tight slap on his back. It was the first trauma of air and sensation and flinching skin—a great change from being inside fluid and floating. The tiny body’s eyes opened. Now the sensation had changed, and it was of the warmth of a human hand, of being held. The tiny body, all crinkly, was being wiped clean as it screamed and kicked at all the dryness; having come out of a snug wet interior, this felt too prickly and dry. With his first gulp of air, the one sensation that took over all else was hunger.

  Hunger was screaming within him; the hunger to live. As the boy came into life, screaming in affirmation, his inner eye opened. The space he entered was bathed in light, and standing in the doorway was a luminous figure who touched the boy’s forehead. From that moment on the boy named Lava always saw a white luminous dot between his brows. He also remembered the moment his eyes first opened when he was born, and at times the sensation of swimming before his birth. As the luminous figure left, Lava heard around him the sound of ocean waves like the fluttering of owl wings. He saw his mother Sita’s face. The moment she took him in her hands and soothed his tiny, trembling body, holding him up to her face, and started humming Om Namo Narayana, he could recognize the resonant hum from when he was inside. His being registered this touch as home, safe from all others and embedded it in his memory as ‘Amma’.

  ‘Sita,’ said Urmilla, overcome with emotion, ‘he is every bit like the sun, born at the break of dawn. He will dispel every kind of darkness.’

  ‘Yes, my lovely darling will hold up truth like a mirror! May that always be your armour!’ replied Sita exhilarated, forgetting the agony and exhaustion of her labour till a few moments ago. She was made to lie down with her baby. With cloths soaked in warm water and turmeric, Urmilla and the attendant sponged Sita and the newborn. Hot milk laced with turmeric and crushed pepper was brought and Sita drank it eagerly holding on to her baby, lying face down on top of her. With the birdsong of early morning, her racing heart started to slow down, the milk and turmeric soothed her throat, and with a feeling of lightness and joy, and a heaviness in her body she slept, smiling.

  The morning hours passed in bursts of sleep for Urmilla as she watched over Sita, the attendant and even Valmiki. In the hour before midday, the visiting deer, the goats, the cow and her calf heard a shrill cry. From the haze of sleep everyone jumped up. The raw cry of hunger spiralled from the women’s hut making the leaves shiver in the warm breeze. The realization that life in the hermitage would be changed forever dawned on Valmiki as he decisively walked, then hesitated, then moved towards the women’s hut as the birth had been announced to him. He had not seen the newborn yet. As he approached the hut he was waved away vigorously by Urmilla: ‘Sita’s giving the first feed! I’ll tell you when is a good time to come.’

  Valmiki was indignant, but after years of discovering how events change human responses, he smiled wisely and withdrew. He witnessed his reaction: ‘How dare she! She is a guest here and now she is dictating when I can and cannot see Sita! Am I to be treated as a stranger in my own hermitage?’ He began to hear the same phrase from another corridor of thought in his head: ‘Sita has just given birth and is exhausted; Urmilla is the only one who can tend to her needs. Why am I interfering with thoughts of power, about who is playing host and who is the guest? What a terrific and unexpected stroke of genius in the grand accident of life that Urmilla should appear at the time of Sita’s labour. What could I have done? Who could have predicted that Sita would be exiled? It has changed the whole course of the story and, so many lives.’

  Inside the hut, the newborn was gorging on Sita’s breast secreting the ivory-coloured, sweet milk-sap of life. Sita’s heart danced with happiness. Urmilla and Sita laughed at the way the infant made smacking and chortling sounds as he suckled. Sita stroked his tiny head of jet black hair, saying, ‘May you never be in want of anything. Let your heart and mind always be your best friends in life.’

  ‘He certainly has strong lungs! So he will know how to shout and get whatever he wants,’ said Urmilla cheerfully.

  Valmiki entered the hut when Sita was ready to receive him. He bowed low with folded hands, saluting the newborn. He could see the signs of Brahma’s visit in the luminous dot on the infant’s forehead. The tiny window of the hut brought in a draft of fresh air and the dazzling sun streamed on the heads of mother and son, thick with blue-black hair. ‘Well, Maharaj! You picked a fine spot for a hermitage! Now it has become a township!’ was Sita’s welcoming remark.

  ‘What better way to contemplate Truth than by applying all of life’s variations to experience the Veda, heh? So, you are well, Sita? What have you named the child?’

  ‘Lava. I hope he and I can have a home here. It is true I don’t have a home, but I want this boy to be learned and who could be a better guru than you, Maharaj? Urmilla and I …’

  ‘Done! You don’t have to say another word, Sita. He may not learn the ways of the court, but he will learn to tell the story of Truth,’ said Valmiki emphatically, wiping his tears.

  So, within a few days everyone was getting into a new routine that at first seemed all-consuming and centred on Lava’s hunger patterns. But soon, everyday rituals were threaded together with making the fire, cooking, feeding, washing, listening to thoughts of the day, singing, debating and hosting pilgrims and, occasionally, travellers.

  The days passed into months and it was already time for the rice-milk ceremony for Lava. His head had been shaved of his bee-black curly hair, but within a few days the stubble emerged like an indigo wash. His eyes were blue-black and he buzzed with a curiosity about everything that moved or was still. His hearing was impeccable and he could repeat the exact tone and pitch of what he heard, even if he could not pronounce complete words properly.

  He had a large vocabulary to draw from. The wind in the trees, soft rain, hard rain on the huts, lightning, rolling thunder, water pouring into vessels, crackling fire, the snap of dry branches and sticks, the cow mooing, the calf calling, goats bleating, the plopping and patting of dung cakes, the difference between wet and dry wood being chopped, Valmiki sweeping the hermitage, the shy arrival and departure of deer as they munched on leaves. With human sounds the repertoire was limited to the people around him. He could catch the high notes of Sita’s humming, the cackling of Valmiki’s laughter, Urmilla’s throaty and nasal voice and the attendant’s whispers. The passing travellers never stayed long enough and were often too tired or deferential in Valmiki’s presence, but what Lava could understand was who made up his ‘family’ of humans and animals, and who were ‘outsiders’.

  The rice-milk ceremony was also a preparation for the first word to be inscribed on Lava’s tongue with honey. Valmiki inscribed an aa-au-mm and so took on his youngest apprentice. ‘There,’ he said with his customary cheer, ‘the three syllables that make for all dimensions of the world and the human body! But don’t forget the silence after each cycle. That will teach you everything about this world and that, and how to tell it.’ Lava only sucked the honey and put his hand in the leaf cup and licked his palm clean.

  The merriment continued, but Sita held on to its sanctity as well. ‘Imagine that!’ she thought. ‘Were Lava born in the kingdom, Rama and I would have sent for Valmiki for this auspicious rite! How naturally this has happened now—I wish Rama was here to see …’ She had to stop herself. It seemed as if a former self was taking over. Was it natural to think of Rama with such
closeness since he was the father of the child? After all, no woman can make a child all by herself. Was she weakening? Should she inform Rama about the birth of the child? But then, would Lava be taken away? It might mean that Lava would be in greater comfort and learn to be a prince were he to be sent to Rama in Ayodhya. But, if Rama remained obsessed with matters of the state, would he make any time for Lava? Wouldn’t the child feel more abandoned amidst luxury without someone to love and guide him? What life was he being exposed to in the forest? Was she being selfish in not being able to part from him because he was the only joy she felt of late? Sita decided after all these apprehensions that Lava should stay with her, as in this forest he would have his mother’s love, his aunt’s and the attendant’s care, and the tutelage of the great Valmiki, who would initiate him into the ways of enlightened learning the way no court scholar could. Lava was playing with a piece of wood that Urmilla had carved into a wheel. He was looking intently at Sita, and when she looked back she wondered how much of that decision was really hers? Does a soul really choose the family it wants to live in? Then wait in the womb of its choice to form a body? She had not said a word, but Lava felt the chord of communication. He pushed the wheel away and stood up bouncing and stretching his arms. Sita’s heart was churning. She wiped her tears and picked up her son and, placing him on her hip, said: ‘No more tears from me, Lava. Come, let us go and talk to that peepul leaf and see what she has to say.’ Lava held her face on either side with his tiny hands on her ears. Sita looked into his face as if she were looking into a mirror, not just for her reflection, but for a quality of her being. Her son looked straight into her eyes, and with a toothless smile acknowledging her, kissed his mother’s forehead.

  One day, Urmilla had set off with the attendant to seek out some leaves and berries to create a health tonic for Lava. She also prepared vast quantities of it and stored it for willing travellers and pilgrims and they bartered it for grain and cloth. Sita was bathing Lava, and Valmiki was composing a new metre.

  Sita had to wash clothes by the forest spring and return with some fresh water for drinking. She had counted on Lava being asleep after his feed and bath. However, that was not working to plan. She began to wonder if he had had an extra dose of Urmilla’s health tonic as he was extremely energetic. Sita tried to play with him and tire him out but he seemed to be more vigorous and would not have her leave him. Sita couldn’t help gazing at the sun’s speeding journey towards midday. She didn’t want to blame delays on Lava and wanted to keep everything just so by the time Urmilla and the attendant returned, as they never really got a break from daily chores. The heat was rising and Sita had tried every trick to get Lava to nap, but he tricked her back by pretending to sleep, and when he got wind that she wanted to go somewhere, he did everything to detain her without crying.

  At last she went to Valmiki. ‘Maharaj, it’s getting late for my chores. Please, could you take Lava’s lessons a little earlier?’

  Valmiki could see Sita getting exasperated and that might mean putting up with an irritable woman in the hermitage, which could mean a really bad day for composition. He would constantly have to stay out of her way to keep his mind calm so that it would chime with the rhythm and metre for his poem. Valmiki had discovered early enough in life that passive resistance requires greater energy than confrontation. He had noticed that when women get exasperated they keep clearing things out or rearranging them, and this could entail the jangling sounds of pots and pans. He needed the heap of palm leaves in the chaotic order they seemed to be in to make the connections for his forthcoming poem. He was terrified almost like a child that Sita might get into a fit of clearing the chaos and stack all his palm leaves, written on or not, and he would completely lose the pattern of what he had in mind.

  ‘No problem, Sita, leave Lava with me and we will pass the time. You go and do what you have to,’ said Valmiki rather strategically as Sita lowered Lava on to his lap.

  Sita left the hermitage with a bundle of clothes and a long pouch of the sweet-smelling but bitter reetha soap nuts. Valmiki saw her stop at the entrance to the hermitage, put the bundle down and retie her long hair into a topknot—something she always did before leaving and returning to the hermitage. To Valmiki, it seemed that she was conducting a little ritual, the way classical performers do before entering the dimension of imagined and heightened reality; of closure on one space before embarking into another. She always bit her lip and looked thoughtful, almost as if she would have to slip into another role as she left the hermitage or returned to it. Who was she when she went to do these tasks? An attendant at the hermitage? An abandoned wife and mother who was taking refuge? An exiled queen? Or a resourceful woman who lived as comfortably at the hermitage—with her companions doing the chores in rotation—as she would as a queen in a palace with an army of servants?

  Lava had started tapping his toy rattle on Valmiki’s knee. ‘Tut-tut-tut,’ Valmiki started and the child joined in the beat. ‘Tat-tat-tvam asi,’ said Valmiki clapping his hands and the child repeated, ‘Ta-ta-tamaswee …’ The game was good and Lava was engaged; slowly his eyes glazed and, with his hand in midair grasping the rattle, he fell fast asleep. Valmiki decided not to move him but lay him on the deerskin mat beside him. Valmiki watched him closely, and then he was struck by a phrase, which grew into a poem:

  What mother could resist giving her child this sleep

  Kissed by the dappled sun

  Amidst the fragrance of shimmering neem leaves

  And the percussion of wind riding through that tall bamboo grove?

  What clouds may appear and awaken her dread of future fears?

  Would this playful rattle now

  Rear its head in a martial or meditative spear?

  The dribble from his lips now from a nourishing feed

  Could turn to cold blood as he lay

  In permanent sleep on a distant battlefield.

  For now this ocean of rest is deep

  Even the poets cannot fill this child’s ears with blessings

  The way her love knows beyond sense and sound …

  And it wasn’t quite the way it had flashed in his mind’s eye. So he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the seed of what the phrase was trying to say. He didn’t want to analyse it or question it. Just live it—a mother would wish her child innocence. The sleep that comes with it visits only a child. A mother would do anything to shield her child from even the thought of danger … and with each word he slipped into a world of images accompanied by the sound of ocean waves so he could see clearer with his inner eye. He caught every hue, tone and colour of the sensation of a child’s sleep, its quality watched by a mother. He heard the music in the sigh from the mother’s breast and opened his eyes, driven to write the composition.

  Instantly his enthusiasm left him. He froze. He rubbed his eyes. What was the dream? The mother’s sigh in his musings or what he was confronting just now? Valmiki slapped his face and pulled his beard. He was awake. His blood was warm. He stared again. Lava was not lying asleep. He was not there. He was not anywhere. The sun had shifted. Was it really that long that Valmiki had been ‘away’? ‘If a blink of Brahma is an eon of time,’ he thought with a great sense of futility. ‘Aiyiyo, Narayana! What good is my knowledge, realization, composition …’ he began to scold himself loudly. ‘Here was a child created by man and woman, in flesh and blood. Its mother placed the child in my care. I put it there and was playing with it and now it’s missing from under my very own nose! Maybe I shouldn’t call Lava “it”!’

  He was close to tears, he felt so helpless. He couldn’t help thinking how all this was going to affect Sita. ‘What all I have put her through in the Ramayana. Firstly, I did not give her an ordinary birth, so that she would be extra-ordinarily human. The one joy I gave her was Rama and their love. But before she could enjoy the privacy of her home, she accompanied Rama into exile. Then there was that abduction—how strong she was to have withstood the wiles of Ravana. At last
Hanuman brought her comfort, and then … oh! Why is fiction truer than life? The humiliation of the fire test! That too she endured and was by then willing to leave the stage of private acts and public men. But I needed Sita to return to Ayodhya with Rama for the long-awaited coronation. What would life be like in the ordinary court, I thought, after all the epic struggles? And then, without my even dreaming it Sita became pregnant, and then Rama, secretly, exiled her.

  ‘She has stayed on with me because she feels she has nowhere else to go. While she’s been here she has taken care of everything; the one thing she had asked me to do was to look after Lava and what do I do? Go into a spell of composing! Aiyiyo! Where did this child go? How could he wander off when he was asleep? Which wild and stealthy creature has taken this child off for its meal? What a curse my intense concentration can be! That’s why they called me Valmiki—the one who cannot be shaken—such that even an anthill has grown on top of him while he is lost in meditation. What good are these titles when a life is lost, and another life will be dead while living?’

  He berated himself because he did not have the courage to see if there were signs of Lava being dragged away or, indeed, having been mutilated. How strange that his life as a ferocious highwayman and murderer, before he came to tell and write Ramayana, had completely washed away from him. For that he was ever thankful. The eternity of the imagination, the power of words, the meeting with Narada who had touched his soul. But what should he do now?

  Words. Their power. It struck him. Another epiphany. He sat under a banyan tree. He sat on a deerskin. At an arm’s length was the sacred kusa grass that had enabled many a disciple to enter deeper channels of meditation. This was the defining moment. Valmiki the creator distilled his humility, his intention to alleviate the burden of Sita’s sorrow and the power of his imagination that he believed was a heightened truth. He stretched out his arm and plucked a single blade of kusa grass. Closing his eyes, he touched the wellspring of his knowledge and love. In the illumined lotus of his spirit centre he saw a steady flame shining. As his inner sight grew sharper he saw a male child who looked like Lava. ‘Lava,’ he said out loud. When he opened his eyes there was Lava.