PRINCE IN EXILE Read online

  Rama simply stood his ground.

  He let the axe come flying at him with all the force of Parsurama’s headlong-rushing swing. He let the blade of the axe strike his exposed neck, catching it on the right side of that narrow stem, midway between his delicate collarbone and strong jawline. An artery pulsed once in the instant before the blade struck the dark, almost bluish skin. Sita’s eyes were among those that saw the throb of Rama’s lifeblood in his bared neck, as distinct as the flutter of a bird’s heart in its exposed breast. A single pulse, like the beat of an unheard dhol-drum at some distant funeral procession. And then the blade struck home with enough impact and shakti to shatter a mountainside of basalt rock into smithereens.

  THREE

  The axe struck Rama’s neck with a sound like nothing human ears had ever heard before. It was less a sound than an absence of sound. An utter blankness, as if the axe had struck the trunk of a tree so thick and soft that it had penetrated right up to the haft. But even the softest treetrunk would have issued some sound, the faintest of pulpy thumps perhaps, or the tiniest thwack as the enormous axe-blade imbedded itself in its bed of living cellulose. Whereas when the edge of that legendary blade hit Rama’s neck, it gave off no sound at all. Or rather, no audible sound.

  What ensued instead was a vibration that began at the exact point where blade met skin, and spread outwards in ever-widening concentric circles, like a boulder flung into the midst of a placid pool. The edge of the blade hit the dark skin of Rama’s neck and shivered visibly. Sita could see the blade blur with the force of the vibration, like the wings of a hummingbird. She saw the vibration travel back up the haft of the blade all the way to the hilt, into Parsurama’s fingers, his hirsute forearms, his muscle-knotted arms, all the way up his thigh-thick shoulders, up his own bullish neck, to his teeth, which were set to keening, and his face, which twisted into a paroxysm of agony and disbelief as the vibration shuddered through his entire being, his eyes widening not with anger now but with shock. At the same time, she saw also the air itself, the very air around both combatants, filled with motes of dust from the rockfalls in the slanting afternoon sunlight, tremble as the wave of vibration passed through it. She saw the concentric circles of unheard sound spread outwards from Rama until they encompassed the entire ledge on which both men stood, outwards to the tips of the lowered lances of the front-liners - these shivered briefly, startling the men who held them - and then, with the sudden impact of a whiplash, the wave struck the Ayodhyans themselves, herself as well, rippling back behind them, passing through them like some invisible force. And she felt the keening in her teeth, a screaming absence of sound that filled her brain with agony, and her heart clenched tighter than a smith’s bellows for one frozen instant, before the vibration moved through her and past her and behind her, spreading throughout the silently watching lines of Ayodhyan soldiers and their beasts of burden.

  At that same instant, Parsurama was flung back across the length of the ledge, a distance of some twenty yards, his body bending over as it travelled, until his back struck the side of the mountain with a shuddering impact. A crack appeared in the mountainside, causing entire plates of stone to shiver and crackle all around, and the white-clad Brahmin fell to the ground, landing, appropriately enough, upon his knees. A cloud of dust from his impact with the mountainside drifted down like powdery snow, coating his bare sweat-glistening shoulders and hirsute body.

  He remained there in that behumbled posture for a long moment, his face still twisted in the expression of agony with which he had reacted to the keening vibration of the axe striking Rama’s neck. Then his face cleared, and realisation came to him slowly, in stages. First, the disbelief. Then the shock. Then the anger, sudden and white-hot, flaring in his eyes and nostrils. Then the fear, unfamiliar and long forgotten, a stranger to his indestructible heart. Then, finally, like a shedding of scales, the understanding, clear as water, upon his face.

  Parsurama rose slowly to his feet, setting first one heavy foot upon the surface of the ledge, then the other, pushing himself upward as if the very effort of fighting gravity was too much all of a sudden. He stared across the sun-drenched ledge at Rama, standing exactly as he had stood all this while, slender, a mere boy, clutching the Bow of Vishnu in his right hand.

  Parsurama said softly, yet loudly enough to be heard by every set of ears throughout the ravine, ‘Who art thou?’

  There was no reply. Rama remained standing as he was, staring at Parsurama with that expression of calm serenity that Sita had already begun to recognise as his look.

  Parsurama asked again, louder: ‘Who art thou? Tell me truly.’

  Still Rama stood motionless, serenely silent.

  ‘Who art thou? I beg you, answer me.’

  The entire ravine was silent now, listening. For the urgency in the Brahmin’s voice, the tone of panic, was alarming. They were watching a demi-god brought down to his knees.

  Finally, when nobody expected a response any longer, Rama replied. His voice was as soft as a gentle breeze, carrying the lilt of distant birdsong, so soft one barely knew if one heard it or imagined it, like the imagined sound of the ocean echoing deep within a large seashell.

  ‘I am Rama,’ he said simply.

  Parsurama stared at him. The Brahmin’s eyes were as stunned as those of a lion bested by a gazelle. The axe in his hand still trembled faintly with the aftermath of the supernatural vibrations.

  Rama fitted an arrow to the Bow of Vishnu. Sita started as she realised that the arrow had appeared out of nowhere. She knew quite well that there had been no arrow or quiver when Parsurama had tossed the bow to Rama earlier. Then again, there had been no bow either a moment before that. If the bow itself could materialise out of thin air, why not an arrow?

  Rama pulled the cord of the bow back with the familiar leathery sound of hide being stretched to its limits. Sita could almost smell the resin, feel the coarse grip of the curved wood, hear the minute sounds the wind made as it thrummed on the taut bowstring. And she could feel, as if she was within Rama’s mind for that fraction of a second, the utter raptness with which the archer set his eye on the target, a drawing of all focus on that one arrowtip-point to which the missile must travel, the fading away of all other sights and sounds, all other sensations, leaving one in a capsule outside human time and space, outside one’s own self almost. It was a sensation that Sita had adored since the first time she had experienced it, standing with a tiny child’s bow to her small shoulder at the tender age of three, Nakhudi and the bowmaster of Mithila Palace standing to either side, whispering instructions in her infant ears.

  Rama spoke again, quietly. ‘You know this arrow.’

  Parsurama was still standing as before, his axe clutched in his right hand, slightly trembling, his face and stance that of a man who had suffered a mortal blow to the nether regions yet would not look down at the damage.

  ‘It is the arrow with which my Lord Shiva razed Tripura to the ground. That single arrow was sufficient to bring the city crashing down to dust and cinders.’

  After a pause, Rama said, ‘Then you know what will happen if I loose it at you.’

  ‘One of two things,’ Parsurama replied. ‘Since I am given the gift of invulnerability, it may not destroy my being. Yet it may take away all the accumulated penance I have acquired over millennia of bhor tapasya. Or it may destroy my ability to move through worlds as I do now, simply by cleaving through barriers with my axe.’

  After a moment, the Brahmin added slowly, ‘The choice is up to the one who looses it.’

  The silence on the mountainside was palpable. If this were a katha told by a daiimaa at bedtime, Sita thought, no child would have believed that fifty thousand watching people could make so little sound.

  Rama said, ‘You are a Brahmin, and I have been raised to honour and respect all Brahmins. For Kshatriyas have changed much since last you set foot upon this mortal realm, axe-wielder. It is true that once our caste was arrogant and thoughtless, that w
e were raised as brute hunters and warriors, slaves to our baser instincts and incapable of understanding the Vedas, let alone reading them. But that has all changed in the millennia since you last cleansed the earth. Now Kshatriyas have come to accept their secondary status to Brahmins. Some, like my father-in-law Janaka, whom you know well, are as learned in the Vedas as any maharishi and as pious in their lifestyles as any tapasvi sadhu. The code of Manu Lawmaker, founder of my dynasty and builder of mighty Ayodhya, is followed religiously by all Kshatriyas. Thus have countless Kshatriyas offered their swords, their wealth, their kingdoms, their daughters, and even their lives to Brahmins on demand. My ancestor Raja Harishchandra did so, and was ever exalted in the annals of Suryavansha history. So did my grandfather Raghu fulfil a Brahmin’s demand for guru-dakshina even though it bankrupted him. Only a fortnight past, my father surrendered my brother’s life and my own unto Brahmarishi Vishwamitra, sending us untested into the Bhayanak-van to battle Tataka and her hybrid hordes. I could relate countless instances, yet let one last one suffice.’

  Rama had not relaxed his hold upon the arrow as he had spoken this long speech. But he had let the arrow point upwards, towards the sky, the better to enable himself to address the Brahmin. Now he lowered the bow and aimed it once more at the axe-wielder before he continued speaking.

  ‘I could wreak a terrible fate upon you if I so choose, with the use of this astra. Yet I shall honour your caste and knowledge by giving you the choice. What would you have me do, Brahmin? Destroy your ability to move through the seven worlds, rendering you as immobile and hapless as a broken-winged bird fallen to gritty earth? Or shall I decimate the accumulations of all your millennia of hard penitential meditation? Answer me quickly, for this weapon, once armed, must be used.’

  The slanting sun had descended and now shone directly at the western face of Mount Mahendra. Its rays found the white-clad Brahmin, turning his beard and hair into wreaths of flame, and his eyes into glittering hot diamonds. For a moment it seemed that the legendary one, pinned down by the searchlight beam of the sungod, was about to burst into flame himself.

  Parsurama raised his axe, his eyes glinting with moistness in the hard sunlight. ‘I pray to you, do not deny me my ability to move through worlds. For then I shall die slowly but surely, just like that broken-winged bird you spoke of. But since you must unleash the weapon of Lord Vishnu, then use it to destroy my penance and all the boons I received as benediction for that penance.’

  ‘So be it,’ Rama said, and without another word he loosed the bow-cord. The arrow left the Bow of Vishnu with a sound like a comet streaking over the earth’s surface, close enough to be heard yet not close enough to touch. The sound was a boom that filled the entire sound spectrum. The arrow ignited in midair at the instant it left the crescent of the bow, and Sita found herself, as if in a dream, able to see every yard of its progress, as if time itself had been stopped still by the arrow’s loosing. It blazed fiercely as it travelled, with a fiery white-hot light, and the air warped around it, turning rainbow-hued and rippling angrily like the corona of distortion around an intense flame. It seemed to take aeons to reach its destination, and when it did, she saw the result with dreadful clarity.

  The arrow encountered something around Parsurama, some invisible force sheathing the Brahmin. It paused briefly, and a screaming, banshee-like sound rose from its point of contact, as if this unseen barrier was unimaginably hard to penetrate. Then, with a noise like the tip of a blade piercing a wine-bladder filled to bursting point, the arrow penetrated the invisible bubble and entered the person of Parsurama himself. But even as it entered, the arrow passed through his being, leaving no puncture wound nor releasing any blood or causing physical damage. Whether thereafter it entered the face of the mountain or simply evaporated, she did not know. That was all she was given sight of.

  The return to normal time and awareness was as wrenching as a collision with a stone floor after a long fall. Sita put a hand up to her head to steady herself, disoriented and shaken. Every soldier around was similarly disoriented. Mortals are not meant to witness such sights. Yet we were given sight of this in order that we might provide witness.

  Parsurama staggered forward, head lowered. Liquid dripped steadily from his forehead, and at first Sita thought it must be blood, that the arrow had caused some bodily harm after all. It seemed as though his very face was melting. Then, as the Brahmin used his axe to stop his forward fall and rested his weight upon the weapon, raising his head fractionally with the force of the effort, she saw that the wetness was caused by his caste-marks melting and sloughing off his face. The shame and humiliation he felt were clearly visible in that moment of utter defeat, and despite his earlier arrogance and avowed intention to kill her companions and destroy her blameless husband’s life, Sita could not help but feel a softening of her resolve. A great urge overcame her fear and caution.

  The soldiers around her were still reeling from the disorientation caused by the loosing of the arrow, and she took advantage of their lapsed attention to dart forward, passing between a momentary gap in the closely packed ranks to break through the front line, beyond the ranks of lowered lances, to where Rama stood with the bow in his right hand. He turned his head at her approach, sensing rather than hearing her, and she was relieved to see that his eyes did not shine any longer with that peculiar inhuman blue glow. She gestured towards the Brahmin, hoping Rama would comprehend her intention, and he understood at once, nodding his approval.

  She ran past Rama, to where Parsurama bent over almost double, his arm holding the axe trembling with the effort of keeping himself upright. She took hold of a corner of her sari and, pulling hard, tore it off raggedly. Parsurama stirred at the sound of cloth ripping. Sita bunched the soft fabric in her hand and leaned over, showing it to the Brahmin. He glanced up at her, and she was shocked to see his grey eyes filled with tears. She daubed gently at the melted caste-marks on his forehead, wiping away the stains from his cheeks and beard. Cleansed of the marks of his Brahmin stature, his face seemed old and weary, long past its point of endurance. He could have been any elderly Brahmin in some neglected temple of a forgotten deity, eking out his days on charity and forage. He could have been her father. In that moment, she knew that for all their bluster and arrogance, all men were but motherless boys in their moment of defeat. Perhaps that was the reason for their arrogance and bluster in the first place. She wiped a last stain from his shoulder and then backed away, joining her hands in respect of his status. A Brahmin was more than his caste-marks.

  He bent his head once, thanking her, then tried to straighten. She knew better than to offer to help him in that action. He managed to stand upright with a great effort, looking now like the old Brahmin he truly was rather than the legendary avenger and slaughterer of countless warriors. Sita backed away, then turned and went to stand beside Rama.

  Rama’s face remained the same, yet she felt that he acknowledged her gesture towards Parsurama and approved of it. She stood close to him, feeling the warmth of his body and the warmth of the sunlight, both intermingled inextricably.

  Parsurama inverted his axe with visible difficulty. He held it now with the blade down and the handle aloft, the traditional gesture of surrender.

  ‘Rama Chandra of Ayodhya, aeons ago, after I had cleansed this earth the last time of Kshatriyas, mighty Kasyapa requested me to cease my slaughter. He asked me to give this Prithvi-lok, Mother Earth, a season of rest, to give mortalkind a chance to prove their worthiness once more by giving birth to a new generation of honourable, respectful Kshatriyas. I see now that this has come to pass. I had promised Kasyapa then that I would not spend a single night here on earth again. I returned on this day because I heard the sound of Shiva’s bow breaking and mistakenly believed that my axe was needed again to teach Kshatriyas a lesson. Instead, it is I who have learned a lesson. Young master, had you even a shred of impurity in your thoughts or feelings, any lapse in your fulfilment of your dharma, you could not have esc
aped the bite of my axe. Even now, your severed head would lie in the dirt and dust at my feet. Your very survival proves your purity of thought and intention, your perfection of your duties, your adherence to your dharma. Never before have I encountered a Kshatriya as dedicated and selfless as yourself, one who is so true to his vows and to the code of the Kshatriya. Truly, I say upon this very axe with which I have dispatched so many of your caste-comrades to the netherworlds of Yamaraj, Lord of Death, you are worthy of all honour and admiration. You have redeemed my trust in the warrior race, and in mortalkind as a whole. I bow before you and acknowledge that my vengeance is finally done. No more shall I return to Prithvi-lok and lay waste to Kshatriyas. By your leave now, wielder of Vishnu’s bow, I shall return to the heart of Mount Mahendra whence I came, there to dwell eternally, for I am still blessed with immortality, and there will I stay in perpetual meditation, offering penance for all the blood-letting I have committed, until the end of time, or until such time as my lord and master Shiva Himself sees fit to send Yamaraj to escort me on that final journey to the afterworld. I pray, my honourable victor, give me leave now to depart from your presence.’

  Parsurama turned to face the mountain once more, lifting his axe only when his back was to Rama, and placing it upon his shoulder.

  ‘Mahadev,’ Rama said, striding forward. Sita remained where she was, watching him walk over to the mountain face before which the Brahmin stood. Rama held the bow out to Parsurama.

  ‘You have forgotten to take Vishnu’s bow,’ Rama said.

  ‘Nay,’ Parsurama replied, without turning around. ‘I have no further need of it. It belongs to you, Rama Chandra. It has always belonged to you. Do with it as you see fit.’

  The Brahmin stepped directly into the mountain, passing through the solid rock like water absorbing into cotton, and vanished completely from sight.

  FOUR

  Lakshman’s horse crested the rise and he sat speechless for a moment, enraptured by the vision of the Sarayu Valley spread before him for as far as the eye could see. Home at last, he thought. Despite the delay caused by the encounter in the ravine, Guru Vashishta had worked his magic. Their passage over the back of Mount Mahendra and through the ravine had brought them out not on the far side of the same range, but a good fifty yojanas further north and west, into the heart of the Kosala nation. Lakshman’s heart leaped with sudden joy as he recognised familiar landmarks and realised that they were almost within sight of Ayodhya.