Prince of Dharma (12 page)

In his heart, he had no doubt at all, only a warm glow. Making love to her again had been like nothing else he had ever experienced. And that look in her eyes when he had told her of his decision to step down? Would he see that expression in Second Queen Kaikeyi’s eyes when he told her the same news? He didn’t think so. And that last gesture, her determination to pray to the gods despite the final analysis of the physicians, that had caused his throat to choke with emotion. How could he have frittered away so many years in the arms of Kaikeyi and not come to Kausalya even once? All those times they had stood, sat or walked side by side at official functions and ceremonies and he had felt a kinship with her that he didn’t feel with any other woman; that feeling had been so right, and he had been so wrong to ignore it. But he had his reasons for that long absence and his only prayer now was that Kausalya would not press him to reveal those reasons. It was that he had dreaded most of all these many years: her questioning. He was grateful to have accomplished this much without being subjected to it. Yet he was filled with conflicting emotions, his guilt over the long absence vying with the lush sensual fulfilment he felt at being rejoined with his first true love. 

The mixture of regret and joy was still visible on his face as he emerged from the connecting corridor and came face to face with Guru Vashishta. 

‘Gurudev, pranaam,’ he said, joining his hands respectfully before the seer. 

‘Pranaam, raje,’ the guru replied. ‘I see that you have been binding old wounds and weaving fresh bonds this morning. It is a good beginning to an auspicious day.’ 

Dasaratha bowed his head silently, not sure what to say to that observation and knowing from long experience that it was best to say nothing rather than blurt out a foolish remark. The Kshatriya code demanded that even the proudest and fiercest warrior caste must bow before the spiritual superiority of a Brahmin. Yet Dasaratha bowed his head not simply to uphold the code but out of simple respect. Guru Vashishta had mentored fifty kings of the Suryavansha dynasty before Dasaratha, every single one of his ancestors dating back to clan-founder Ikshvaku and even beyond to Manu Lawmaker, the first Arya. For one thousand years, the greatest Suryavansha Kshatriyas had bowed before Vashishta. It was a formidable heritage. 

The sage turned and began to walk, inviting Dasaratha to accompany him. Dasaratha found he had to strive to keep pace with the agile and slender guru who walked as decisively as he spoke.
One thousand years older than me and I’m the one who walks like an ailing old man
, he thought ruefully. Yet there was a time, not ten years ago, when he could at least keep up with the seer. For the tenth time that day, he cursed the nameless canker that had brought him to this decrepit state. 

If the guru noticed his struggle to keep pace, he gave no sign of it. His manner was as businesslike as always when discussing formal matters with the maharaja. 

‘Ayodhya-naresh, I am pleased to inform you that an even more auspicious event has occurred this fine first day of spring. A very great and divine personage has chosen to grace us with his presence. I do not yet know what his arrival here means, but certainly it is an auspicious and momentous visitation. Maharaja Dasaratha, count yourself among the few fortunate kings of Ayodhya. For you have none other than the renowned seermage Vishwamitra standing at your gates. Come with me, and let us receive him with all ceremony.’ 

It took every ounce of Dasaratha’s will not to stop dead in his tracks. 

SIX 

Lakshman and Shatrugan woke at the exact same instant. They finished their ablutions quickly, dressed and came out of their bedchambers at the same time. Falling into step beside his younger brother—by twenty minutes—Shatrugan slapped him on the back affectionately. 

‘No sword today, Luck?’ 

Lakshman gestured at Shatrugan’s hip. ‘You neither, Shot. Because it’s forbidden by maharaja’s law to carry arms on a feast day. Or did you forget that during your long, rigorous training in the forest at Guru Vashishta’s gurukul?’ 

Shatrugan mirrored Lakshman’s toothy grin. ‘I don’t know about rigorous, but it surely was long. I was beginning to think we would spend the best years of our lives in that hermitage in the middle of nowhere.’ 

‘Well, now you’re back in the lap of luxury.’ Lakshman gestured at the opulence of their surroundings, the princely annexe, a section of the king’s palace. ‘You must feel like you died and went to swarga-loka.’ He corrected himself: ‘Or came back to swarga-loka.’ 

Shatrugan shrugged. ‘Yes, it is heavenly, isn’t it? But somehow, brother, it doesn’t seem real any more. I mean, I remember it from when we were little. Then it was all we knew, our entire cosmos. But after eight years in the forest, living off the land, sleeping on clay floors, dirt under our fingernails all the time, straw in our hair, all this feels … you know … ’ 

‘Maya. An illusion? Like it could vanish at any time?’ Lakshman snapped his fingers, the sound echoing in the silent corridors they were walking through. Except for the occasional curtsying serving girl or maid, the vast halls were empty. Each prince had a suite of seven chambers to himself, with several more additional ones. ‘Yes, brother,’ he agreed as they passed the library and then the akhada, where they worked out together with their brothers every morning. ‘That’s the whole point of those eight years of training. To make us realise the illusive seductiveness of luxury and wealth.’ 

Shatrugan nodded without slowing. ‘That’s one way of putting it. Although I thought we also learned the Vedic sciences and humanities. Everything from Vedic mathematics, physics, geography, ayurveda and the study of human physiognomy, cosmology, astronomy and astrology, military strategy, self-defence and hand-to-hand combat, mastery of weapons, engineering and architecture—’ 

Lakshman clapped his brother on his muscled shoulder. ‘Enough already! I was there too, you know, right beside you, learning all that you learned.’ 

‘I was just trying to point out that after all those years of study and training, it seems so strange to be here again.’ Shatrugan stopped suddenly, turning to Lakshman, a strange expression darkening his features. ‘Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be a free-archer?’ 

Lakshman almost choked on his surprised laughter. ‘What? You mean a mercenary? Like a wandering bow-for-hire?’ 

‘Or a sword-for-hire,’ Shatrugan mused thoughtfully. He looked up at the ornately carved ceiling painted with a fresco depicting the deva of storms, Indra. ‘Sometimes I feel like maybe I was born in the wrong age. Like if I was born a thousand years earlier, I would have been out there battling asuras, slaying rakshasas by the hundreds.’ He looked down at his empty hands, turning them over. They were veined and taut from daily weight and weapons training. Nobody, perhaps not even Rama, trained and exercised as hard as Shatrugan did. It was starting to show. ‘I feel as if I was made for something more than just governing a kingdom and touching silken robes.’ 

Lakshman stared at him. He wasn’t sure what to make of this extraordinary admission. At a loss for words, he turned the revelation into a joke. ‘What did you eat for dinner last night, brother? Because I fear you’ve been stricken with food poisoning!’ 

Shatrugan’s hand flashed out faster than Lakshman could dodge, grabbing his younger twin’s shoulder in an iron-vice grip. The strange expression was still on his angular features. Despite their identical appearance, there was a sense of hardness about Shatrugan that was curiously absent in Lakshman. It was as if an artist had drawn them each in turn, aiming for identical similarity, but had been in a different mood each time. The same features that came across as hard and grim in Shatrugan appeared gentle and light-hearted in Lakshman. It was a subtle contrast visible only to those who looked closely enough, yet once you were keen enough to see it, it was unmistakable. Only when they smiled did the differences vanish. 

They smiled now, at the exact same instant. And became two perfect profiles of the same face. 

‘Speaking of dinner, brother,’ Shatrugan said in a deceptively casual tone, ‘are you planning to gorge yourself full to bursting on Susama-daiimaa’s sumptuous morning naashta savouries, or did you have other more pressing plans?’ 

Lakshman shrugged, the weight of Shatrugan’s hand still on his left shoulder. ‘Actually, I thought I’d skip naashta and make for the mango groves. Rama and I fixed up to meet there at sunrise and it’s almost time.’ 

Shatrugan’s smile deepened. ‘All right then,’ he said slowly, building up momentum with his deliberate pauses, playing a game they had played every day since they had first learned to walk and talk—the very same moment, it had been, in fact. He yelled suddenly, as Lakshman had known he would: ‘Last one to the stables is a camel’s rear end!’ 

Even before he finished, he let go of Lakshman and ran down the corridor, not towards the bhojanshalya where they had been heading, but towards the rear stairway which led to the stables and eastern gates. His ploy to surprise and delay his brother was no more successful than usual: Lakshman’s lighter, less thickly muscled form gave him the edge, carrying him easily ahead of the bulkier akhada-built physique of his brother. Even before they reached the head of the stairwell, the outcome of the race was a foregone conclusion. 

The eastern sky was suffused with luminous soft light, turning the enormous white-marble fountain in the centre of the circular driveway into quietly gleaming bronze. The first strands of light of the rising sun—barely peeking its head over the crags of the distant Gharwal Hills—caught the polished edges of the effigy of Surya, sun god and the progenitor of the eponymous Suryavansha dynasty, standing at his chariot, one hand gripping the twin reins of his magnificent Kambhoja stallions, the other holding his Suryachakra, the magical golden disc. 

The twins slowed to a walk, Lakshman two whole lengths ahead, laughing and slapping one another on the back as they circled the courtyard and rounded the enormous lotus pool containing the fountain. The sculpture itself rose a good seventy feet in the air, towering above the entire courtyard and driveway, casting a shadow that seemed to point proudly at the palace. The brothers turned right towards the chariot-stables where their grooms were waiting, ready and alert. The princes were all early risers and their charioteers knew well enough to keep their raths ready and waiting. The raths, elegantly designed two-horse Arya chariots built for speed and manoeuvrability, gleamed in the early-morning sunshine, their gold-plated iron armour polished to a mirrored sheen. 

Shatrugan dismissed his driver with a curt gesture, leaped up on to the platform of his rath, and was off instantly. He called out to Lakshman as he manoeuvred the rath smartly in a ninety-degree turn. 

‘See you at the games, brother. When I win the shield in the archery contest!’ 

‘You mean when Rama wins the shield!’ Lakshman shouted back. 

Shatrugan waved as he rode off, his rath taking the curve of the fountain easily. Lakshman watched him pass through the rear gates and turn right on to Aja Marg, heading for the royal games field. Their older brother Bharat—older by two weeks— would be there already, waiting for him. Twins they might be, but from infancy, Shatrugan had veered towards Bharat’s company, and Lakshman had sought out Rama’s companionship. The bonds of these pairings had only been strengthened during their eight years away from home. 

Lakshman turned back to the stables. 

He spent a moment speaking affectionately to his horses. He loved animals and they seemed to know this at once. It was one of the many qualities he shared with his elder brother Rama— elder by four weeks, and eldest of all four of them. Shatrugan, on the other hand, neither liked nor disliked animals. 

Lakshman returned the respectful namaskar of his charioteer. ‘Ayushmaanbhav, Samar. How long ago did Rama leave?’ 

The charioteer grinned. ‘Long life to you as well, my prince. Rajkumar Rama left very early, just before dawn. We were only just starting to groom the horses. I knew you would ask after him, so I spoke to his charioteer and Samin says he rode out in the direction of the river.’ 

Lakshman frowned. If Rama’s charioteer was still here, then that meant … ‘He rode his rath himself then?’ 

‘Nay, Rajkumar Lakshman, he declined to take his rath.’ 

‘Horseback then?’ 

‘Yes, my prince. He said that the rath horses should be fresh and rested before the Holi parade, so he took an old battlehorse from the king’s stables.’ 

‘That must be Airavata,’ Lakshman said at once. 

His driver grinned again. In the dim early light his teeth flashed brilliantly white against his dark face. ‘Right as ever, my rajkumar. You and Rajkumar Shatrugan are womb-brothers, yet your kinship with Rajkumar Rama is no less a bond. You are twins in all but appearance.’ 

Lakshman smiled back. ‘So I have been told.’ He thanked his charioteer for the information. Samar and Samin, like the charioteers of Bharat and Shatrugan’s raths, were not just excellent rath-drivers and warriors, they were also fellowshishyas from Guru Vashishta’s gurukul. In the reign of Dasaratha, it was mandatory for all Kshatriyas to acquire the gifts of Saraswati, devi of knowledge. Samar was as much a peer and a friend as he was Lakshman’s rath-driver.