RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA (29 page)

Valmiki saw Atikaya glance furtively around, his eyes flicking nervously like those of a man coming to terms with an unexpected development and trying rapidly to figure out a way to factor it into his plans. He glanced in Valmiki’s direction but his gaze passed over him, not seeing a threat worth noting.
Nowhere near as great a threat as his ten-headed father returned from the dead.
The next words out of his mouth betrayed his own sense of guilt and self-loathing, as obvious as in a child caught torturing a household pet.

“I was only…” Atikaya’s tongue flicked out to lick his lips, the latter faintly greenish-grey, the former distinctly purple, in keeping with the rakshasa’s unusual colouring. “…undertaking the task with which you entrusted me, father. The mission for which you created me and prepared me to undertake.”

Ravana made a sound of dismissal. “This was not that task. Nor the manner in which the actual given task was to be carried out. You know that as well as I do. Even from this remote time, I have the ability to open portals into your day – or rather, a single series of portals integrated vertically in one timeline, a vortal as I term it. Through this vortal, I have been watching and observing you closely ever since you left Lanka, as I thought you might try something as puerile and juvenile as this. In a sense, you haven’t disappointed me at all. You have just done what I expected you to do.”

Atikaya’s eyes continued to flick left and right, even as his voice feigned an injured ego and a tone of accusation: “You spied on me? You do not trust even me, your own son?”

“I trust nobody,” Ravana replied, unperturbed by the outburst. “Especially not my own son. The history of the rakshasa nation is a history of patricide and regicide. Often both directed at the same person.”

“Yes, but this is the task that you—”

“Shut up.” Ravana’s voice was mild, almost off-hand. “Don’t bother with pointless denials and don’t try to buy yourself time to think yourself out of this one, boy. I’m not going to punish you for your mistakes and your excesses. Besides you haven’t done much – you haven’t done anything, in fact. Killing your mother…” Those powerful shoulders shrugged. “Well, matricide is almost as common among our people. No, that is not what brought me here.”

“Then why
are
you here?” Atikaya asked nervously but with growing reassurance. Ravana’s last words had gone some way in giving him his self-confidence back. That, and the fact that the lord of rakshasas was not roaring and venting fury at him by now.

Valmiki was looking at Ravana when the lord of Lanka – correction, the
erstwhile
Lord of Lanka – replied. “To ensure that you do nothing to harm my lord and master.”

Atikaya frowned, blinking in amazement. “
Your
Lord and Master? You have none!
You
are lord and master of the three worlds. You won that supremacy for yourself when you fought and defeated both devas and asuras and wrested heaven and the underworld both before moving on to Prithvi-loka and subjugating it to your thrall as well. “

“That I am,” Ravana admitted. “Yet there is one to whom even I bow and pay allegiance. And with my death, I am finally free to do so openly and without fear of diminishing my own stature. For in the plane that I currently occupy, I am free to walk between worlds, between ages, between moments of itihasa, as I please. That is the gift and power of my great lord.”

Atikaya chuckled, a sound that mirrored his father’s laugh only moments earlier, yet was less mature and baritone in inflection. “I never thought the day would come when you would acknowledge anyone greater and more powerful than yourself.”

“That is because you know very little about me, son. Almost nothing, in truth. On the eternal plane, I have always been subservient to my lord and master. His greatness is everlasting, his glory undiminishable. All that I do, have done, or will do, is only in his name and serves only his purpose. I am but a small piece upon the chaupar board of his infinite game.”

Valmiki would not have believed he was even hearing the words Ravana had just spoken. As it was, had they not been delivered with complete sincerity and conviction, he would have laughed at them outright. But Ravana’s sincerity was undeniable. Apparently, there was a being that even the lord of all demonkind – for what else were asuras to mortals if not demons – revered and adored. Who could this being possibly be? What great and powerful asura did Ravana bow to on the eternal plane?

Atikaya’s voice betrayed the young rakshasa’s own scepticism. “Who is this great being whom you obey then, father? Pray, share his name with me if you will.”

All ten of Ravana’s heads smiled in unison. They were vastly differing smiles – one was near a smirk, another a reluctant sneer, yet another a puzzled frowning grin – but they were smiles nevertheless. “Why, son. He is right here beside me. It is to open this vortal for him to enter through that I have come here today. He will join us in a moment once he completes another pressing task in another dimension in another age. For his work is infinite, his responsibilities untold, his dominions uncountable. These minor events unfolding in Ayodhya in your own time are virtually insignificant in comparison with the vast infinity of concerns that occupy him. He can spare but a moment to address your predicament, then he shall move on to other more pressing matters, therefore I come to prepare the way for him and represent him in all matters of detail and explanation as required.”

Atikaya posed a sneer of his own, closely mirroring the sneering head on Ravana’s rack. “If he is so all-important and all-knowing, why does he trouble himself with these
minor
events at all then? Come now, father. Admit it. You are only playing one of your elaborate mind-games with me. I will not be fooled. There is only you and you have come to punish me for taking matters into my own hand and using my own initiative to unleash your vengeance in a manner of my choosing. That is the truth, is it not?”

Valmiki watched as Ravana shook his many heads and chuckled. A deep-chested, rumbling chuckling. “Ah, youth. Your folly and your utter, complete self-conviction. How blissful it is to believe that what you see, know and assume is the be-all and end-all of everything.”

He stopped chuckling and waved his right hands dismissively. “But you
will
believe in a moment, when my master arrives. For everything that occurs in every plane is under his watchful eye. Not a leaf drops from a withered branch, not a seed germinates or a sperm quickens within a woman’s womb without his mandate. His is the world and everything in it. He is the universe supreme – past, present and future all rolled into one. He is the infinite one, the master of dharma, keeper of all Creation, and I serve him willingly and with immense pride. And in a moment, he shall arrive and you too shall look upon his glowing visage and believe too. For nothing and no one compares with my master. He is god of gods, deva of devas, and even I, Ravana, bow before him and obey his every wish and command.”

SIX

For a brief moment Valmiki wondered if Ravana was either delusional or pretending to be delusional. There was, he knew, a very thin line between religious ecstasy and mental imbalance. He had seen rishis engaged in ghor tapasya for decades lose all sense of reality over time, coming to believe in ludicrous and arcane philosophical theories that they themselves would have considered untenable under normal circumstances. But this was Ravana. If he was imbalanced, then he had been born that way! Ravana’s exploits, his legend, his very physical being were beyond the norm in every sense. Perhaps, just perhaps, he meant what he said. One thing was certain: he believed that everything he said was true, whether or not it really was. Valmiki could see the sincerity shine in the young rakshasa lord’s eyes – all his pairs of eyes – glistening with tears of adoration as he spoke eloquently and passionately of his absent lord. Valmiki had seen that look often before: It was not the look of a forest-crazed fanatic. It was the look of pure devotion he had sometimes, if rarely, seen upon the faces of those who had experienced a direct tryst with a deity.

Slowly, a suspicion began to dawn upon Valmiki. No, surely it cannot be. It was impossible. Yet that look on Ravana’s face…

Suddenly, a shirring sound arose. A great wind swirled, raising dust clouds around both himself and Atikaya. The whole world seemed to grow silent, as if in respectful adoration. Even the beating of his own heart in Valmiki’s chest seemed to slow, until it was a thud every several moments… as if time itself had been stretched and distorted and forced to a fraction of its usual pace. He tried to turn his head but the turning promised to take forever and he knew that some exceedingly powerful supernatural phenomenon was in progress, something greater than anything he had ever experienced before. He felt a great uprising within his being, an elevation of the sense of joy, gratitude, love – the positive emotions. He felt as if all things, visible and invisible, were beautiful and beyond censure or question. He felt as if all his worries and anxieties for himself as well as for others, were petty, insignificant, of no consequence whatsoever. He felt as if the entire burden of living, existing, questing, desiring, wanting, longing, seeking, hungering…all the paraphernalia of everyday mundane existence…were suddenly rendered pointless and irrelevant. He felt the burden of his negativity rise up, threaten to choke him, crush him, weigh down upon him like a bear standing upon his chest…then lifted away abruptly, gone forever. Not merely removed, but deleted from existence. As if everything he had ever feared, desired, dreaded, anticipated had been wiped clean. As if he now faced life once more anew and with the freshness of a newborn babe just come into this natural world. Not even the burden of past lives weighed him down. His aatma felt free and unencumbered. He felt as if he could go anywhere, do anything, live. Live.
Live!

Then the sudden flurry of wind settled. The shirring sound, risen to deafening cacophony, subsided. The silence grew to a terrible, beautiful, mind-numbing symphony of natural silence. Not the absence of sound. But the presence of an experiential elevation so pure, so great, so beautiful that it made his heart sing, his very being delight and dance with euphoria. He felt the primordial joy of living. The unadulterated happiness of a young lamb frisking gaily across rocky crags on a high Himalayan peak, following her mother’s deft hoofs, unaware of the potential for death by falling or death by predator or illness or old age, aware only of the sunshine on her soft downy fur, the crisp clear cold energy-giving air, the delicious aroma of soft, newly risen grass on the patches where the snows had receded with the approach of spring, and the accompanying bleats and calls of her brethren all around her, and like that young lamb, he felt his eyes rise and look upon the approaching vision of the being Ravana described as his lord and master, god of gods, deva of devas.

And his world changed forever.

Sita felt her consciousness return as if from a great distance, like an arrow flying through an endless tunnel. Yet the arrow struck abruptly. One moment she was at the bottom of the long tunnel, the next she was awake and blinking dust out of her eyes. She sat up, feeling her twisted wrist send out pulsating waves of agony; she was able to ignore the pain through discipline mastered through long years of self-abdication. She took in her circumstances in a single glance: the frozen tableau, the songspell holding all Ayodhya in thrall still very much in force, remained much as it had been before her loss of consciousness. The new events and sights that now met her gaze were the crack in the ground where Atikaya had struck with the moon-sword; Atikaya himself, crouched at the foot of a wall some twenty yards away, staring in shocked disbelief; Maharishi Valmiki, somehow recovered from his terrible burns (though his skin still betrayed a scalded look as if the skin itself was newly grown and still tender and pinkish-black), standing beyond Atikaya, staring at the same thing that shocked the rakshasa so, but with a different look in his eyes. Unlikely as it seemed, the maharishi’s gaunt dark face bore an expression of intense adoration. Like a devotee gazing upon the impossible miracle for which he had prayed a thousand years yet never truly believed would ever come to pass.

Then Sita turned her head and looked at the impossibility herself.

At the ten-headed being that stood beneath an arch of peculiarly distorted light and air, clearly the product of some manner of powerful sorcery. The impossible, terrible, ten-headed being that she had never expected to see again except in nightmares. The sight of whom sent great surges of terror coursing through her veins and made her entire being scream in silent agony far, far greater than any physical wound or impairment could ever cause.

Ravana! Here!

How could it be possible? Surely she was in the throes of some nightmare now. Like the nightmare that had plagued her as a young, fifteenyear-old princess in her bed in Mithila that one night, back when life had been so simple, and the future had stretched limitless and full of possibility. That night too, he had seemed palpable, as if he had been present there in her very sleeping chamber; and when the nightmarish vision transported her bodily to that high fortification upon that dark storm-tossed island and she had looked down upon that massive army boarding an armada of warships, it had seemed real too. Yes, surely this was a nightmare just as that had been. Just a bad dream.