PRINCE IN EXILE (61 page)

And I am blessed to have her for my wife
. Aloud he said, ‘Blessed are we to receive such great gifts, my lady. Yet tell us if you will, what is this mission you wish us to undertake?’ 

‘Not I. I would wish you only a decade and four years of peaceful exile and blissful harmony. It is not my mission, and I only come here to give you these gifts and a warning.’ 

‘A warning?’ Lakshman asked, frowning. 

‘Yes. You are on your way to Chitrakut, are you not?’ 

‘Yes,’ Sita said, clutching her gifts to her chest. Her voice sounded less anxious than before, but Rama caught the stress that she was trying hard not to reveal. ‘That is a good place to build our home, is it not? The sage Agastya—’ 

‘Advised you wisely. Chitrakut is a peaceful hill, and you will find much happiness there. But the place to the south of the hill, the plainsland that the ancients named Panchvati … ‘ 

‘Yes?’ 

‘You would do well not to venture there. Whatever the temptation.’ 

‘Why not?’ Lakshman’s tone was more curious than concerned. He was challenged by the warning. ‘Are there demons there? We can fight demons, can we not, Rama? We do not fear them.’ 

Anasuya’s corona of white light shimmered reddish for a moment. Then she continued in a quiet tone: ‘There are worse things than demons in this world, young Lakshman. You would do well to remember that not all battles can be fought with the skill of arms.’ 

‘But the Bow of Vishnu, the Arrow of Shiva?’ Lakshman asked, his eyes bright, his chin raised defiantly. ‘Why would you give us these if not for a battle?’ 

Rama was about to admonish his brother, when Anasuya responded: ‘The weapons are for your defence. They are not meant to be used to start violence, only to defend yourself against any violence that may be directed at you.’ 

Lakshman shook his head, irritated. ‘What is the difference? Sometimes one has to strike first in order to defend oneself against a stronger, stealthier foe. Asuras do not ask politely before starting a fight!’ 

Anasuya’s eyes narrowed.
Watch him closely, Rama. Your brother has much to learn about asuras, warfare, and himself. It is his self-righteous outrage at the injustice of your exile that fuels his anger. He must understand that he cannot set one wrong right by committing further wrongs. Not by slaughtering a thousand asuras can he achieve the justice he seeks
. 

Aloud she said, ‘When the time comes, my friends, you will fight for your lives, and so be it. I pray that the things I have given you will be of some use at that unfortunate time. But I believe that this violence, like all violence, can be prevented.’ 

‘How?’ Rama’s question was genuine. ‘Tell us and we will do as you ask. We do not wish any further bloodshed.’ 

‘In that case, Rama, do not shed any blood.’ 

Lakshman cocked his head. ‘But what if—’ 

‘There are no what-ifs, rajkumar,’ she said sharply. ‘Simply a choice between himsa and ahimsa.’ Violence and non-violence. ‘Lay down your arms as long as you dwell in Chitrakut, draw no blood, and you may see your fourteen years pass without incident.’ 

‘Lay down our arms?’ Lakshman shook his head sceptically. ‘We are Kshatriyas. It is our dharma to fight the fights that need fighting.’ 

‘And to know when not to fight.’ Anasuya drew a deep breath, then resumed in a less harsh tone. ‘All I ask is that you do not draw first blood, or be the one to initiate the violence. This is the missive I came to give you: go to Chitrakut and live there in peace and harmony, all the years of your exile if you can. But if you are lured away by temptation, and tricked into committing an act of violent aggression against another being, be it mortal, animal or asura, then the devas alone protect you. With those words I leave you now. Go in peace, Rajkumar Rama, Rajkumar Lakshman, Rajkumari Sita.’ 

Her extremities shimmered and blurred briefly, and then she was gone, leaving them alone once more in the forest. Rama looked down and saw that the sack of ber was still lying at his feet where he had dropped it. He bent and picked it up. 

FOURTEEN 

They built their hut on the top of Chitrakut hill. To the north and east the hill sheered away in a steep cliffside, falling a hundred and fifty feet to the river Godavari. Running downhill to the west was a long unbroken line of mahua trees, bursting with new life in the height of spring. Behind their hut was a grove of banyan, some almost as large and as ancient as the Nyagrodha of the Nisadas. Beyond that, further to the south, was an unlikely assortment of peepal, fir, elm and even a few walnuts. And farther that way the hill sloped gently into the region known as Panchvati, a vast, thickly forested plain that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could discern - all the way to the western ocean, Lakshman insisted. 

Even if it did not reach the ocean, it was still a formidable wilderness, and one they knew now that they must not venture into. That left a great area for them to inhabit, and they hardly needed any of it. Even Lakshman did not question Anasuya’s warning not to venture in that direction; Rama realised that the new, angrier Lakshman resented being given such a restrictive prohibition, but he also knew better than to disobey it and endanger them all. And so, as that spring wore on to give way to an idyllic summer, they found at Chitrakut a brief respite. A season of rest. 

They built their hut facing north-east. Not only because it let the sun shine in directly each morning, but because it faced both their homes - Kosala was north, and Videha east.
We are still looking back then,
Rama told himself, working on the thatched roof of the hut beside his brother, as Sita used the traditional mixture of dung and mud and straw to lay the floor of their domicile. 

By day, the Dandaka-van hardly lived up to its ominous reputation. The picturesque view from the hill, especially from the short promontory overlooking the confluence, was idyllic enough to attract them every morning during their brief respites from house-building. After the hut was fully constructed and they began work on the fore-garden and rear vegetable patch, they began going farther south, down the Panchvati side of the hill, as it came to be called among them, but never across the river that marked their self-affixed boundary. The view on the Panchvati side was picturesque enough to inspire royal artists and exiled lovers. Rama and Sita loved to sit here and watch the sun go down until it was time for their sandhyavandana. Rama could imagine seers falling into transcendental trances in such scenic surroundings, lost in their tapasya for years on end. The sense of communion with nature was palpable; he could feel the forest growing around him, living, breathing, speaking its verdant dialect. 

By night, it became clear why Panchvati was so notorious. After dusk, the benign artistic vista gave way to a darker side. The howls, roars and grunts of predators carried clearly through the thin mud-and-straw walls of their little house atop the hill. Often by day, when one of them went out foraging for firewood or fruit, they would spy bear tracks, panther or leopard paw-prints, wild boar droppings, wolf markings, and signs of a variety of other denizens of the wild. For unlike asuras, who were notoriously disdainful of crossing water, even a relatively less sanctified river such as the Godavari, the beasts of the wilderness roved where they pleased. It was not the fact that predators prowled around them all night that was alarming, it was the sheer number that was overwhelming. Everywhere they looked, there was evidence of some species or other having marked the area, sharpened its claws on a tree, killed and eaten, leaving gnawed carcasses; constant reminders that this was their territory, not the true home of these three hairless visitors who walked on two legs. 

They had several encounters with these predators. Some inadvertent, as when Lakshman returned once with his face and chest blood-spattered, claiming to have been set upon by a leopard lurking in the trees above. Or when Rama and Sita were collecting flowers for their prayers, heard a grunting sound, and looked up to see a bear twice as tall as Rama. He had reached slowly, cautiously for his bow, the jewelled one that Anasuya had given him and which he had never let out of his sight since, but Sita had thrown him an imploring look that tore at his soul, and he had given the bear the benefit of the doubt. After several moments of raising itself upon hind legs, sniffing the air and chuffing loudly, the bear finally dropped back on all fours and trundled away westwards, dismissing them completely. 

Other encounters he did not always tell Sita about. These were the more frequent, less pleasant run-ins, with boars or wolves or even wildcat, that did not allow any room for pacifism or error. He had to simply draw and shoot, or be mauled, raked, gutted or otherwise fall casualty to the inevitable cycle of violence that was simply nature’s way of going about its daily business. He did not consider these almost daily encounters to be violence per se; they were simply a way of life in the deep forest, an unavoidable part of survival. 

Lakshman was less amenable to Sita’s new insistence on pacifism. He returned the very first night with two antelopes, a doe, a small hog, and a brace of rabbits. It took him three trips to fetch the carcasses, and when they were all finally piled up outside the hut, Sita blanched and gave him a dressing-down such as he had probably never received from Guru Vashishta back in gurukul. Lakshman took the admonishments with equanimity. When Sita was done, he thanked her politely and without any trace of sarcasm for trying to help him curb his violent ways, then calmly discussed how plentiful the game was on the southern hillside, and how he was thinking of sacrificing an antelope every evening in the ancient style. It was as if both were equally natural to Lakshman: hunting and killing for their needs, and Sita’s desire for pacifism. And in a sense they were, Rama found himself agreeing silently: both violence and the desire for peace co-existed naturally in nature, constantly seeking a balance. Neither could rule exclusively, for then life itself would cease: some species would proliferate while others would die out, or be outnumbered. And human society, in its youthful remove from savagery - it was after all only ten thousand years or so since humankind had gained the first glimmers of social understanding - was still largely a reflection of its natural progenesis. Perhaps some day, if there were more humans upon the face of Prithvi than animals, violence truly could end; but what of human violence against other humans? Might not that increase to compensate for the lack of the older varieties of violence? This was the kind of contemplation that occupied Rama’s mind. 

They found a pond in a depression in the hill, lush with lotus flowers. By day the large floating flowers opened to show their pink-petalled blossoms to the sun; by night they closed up like an acolyte joining palms in a namaskar to bid Surya-deva goodnight. When they discovered this place, Rama and Sita began spending more time here than anywhere else. They even neglected their unfinished hut, Lakshman all but pushing them out after the morning meal, saying, ‘Go, let me do my dharma.’ He was quite serious about it. He took his chores in exile literally to be his dharma. And so they were according to scripture, for the Vedic rotes praised those who served others, reserving for them the special blessings of the devas. Lakshman worked by day, and hunted every night after dusk, growing visibly leaner. One morning when Rama went out of the hut to greet the rising sun, he stood at the edge of the cliff near their hut and looked down at the river rushing by below. He saw a figure down by the riverbank, walking lithely to the water with a freshly plucked lotus in hand. It took him a moment to recognize the figure as Lakshman, so much had his brother changed in these few months. 

Rama had changed too. But not in the same way as Lakshman. If anything, he grew towards the opposite direction. After his first doubtful resistance, he began to yield to Sita’s new embrace of ahimsa the Vedic creed of non-violent coexistence. He began to look back upon his adventures in the Bhayanak-van and afterwards as necessary evils, acts of dharma that he committed out of painful necessity. Thinking about his past actions itself brought about a change. He let these churning thoughts and half-percolated insights simmer within, preferring silent contemplation to discourse and debate. That had always been his way. Even as a young shishya at Guru Vashishta’s gurukul he had always been more silent than his fellow pupils. Yet when the guru called upon him to answer a question, he always seemed to have the answer. It was as if he observed all, assimilated everything, processed it in his system, and achieved a level of understanding that was deeper than any amount of intellectual debate could produce. That was one reason why his gurus had always been pleased by him. The Arya way of learning laid special emphasis on silent contemplation.
Each shishya is a school unto himself
, the gurus always said.
And the student must become the teacher in order to understand the lesson
. 

Rama couldn’t claim to have become a guru. But he did feel closer to understanding the essential elusive mysteries of life than he had been before leaving Ayodhya. Life there had been so … busy. Always the press of people, opinions, comments, rumours, news, decisions, sabhas. There was little time to simply be oneself. To expand and build. The emphasis was always on imbibing and absorbing, to becoming a receptacle for other people’s opinions, wants, dislikes, desires. Not on finding out what one thought, wanted, liked, sought. In the hustle and bustle of even the most learned gatherings it was difficult to hear oneself speak at times, let alone think. Surely such volatile discussion did lead to some greater understanding over time; but it was equally as certain that the individual could find the same understanding by another path, the lonely but far truer path of self-contemplation. Combined with the physical exercise of the body to ensure proper breathing, channelling of energies and healthier functionality, this Arya art, named yoga, was unfortunately losing its pride of place as a necessity for all, and being relegated to the practice of only forest hermits, seers and sadhus. Rama and Sita, and Lakshman too when he was free of his endless chores, performed their yogic exercises every day, as much as their daily religious oblations and rituals. And over time, Rama felt, they grew more comfortable with themselves, with each other, and most of all with their circumstances.