Dasaratha glanced at the two seers, standing apart from the royal entourage. Brahmarishi Vishwamitra had remained motionless through this long speech, his staff held upright in his right hand, his impassive weathered face and flowing beard revealing no hint of his inner thoughts or responses. Guru Vashishta looked just as stoic, although there was an air of sadness and empathy that could be sensed rather than seen on his lined face as he listened to the impassioned words of his old friend and shishya, Dasaratha. After all, the greatest living seer in the world had chosen to grant his spiritual guidance exclusively to the Suryavansha dynasty of the Ikshvaku clan a thousand years ago, and in a thousand years even the most austere penitent will start to feel some measure of attachment. He listened to Dasaratha’s words attentively, tacitly indicating his approval of the maharaja’s announcement without needing to say a single word.
Maharaja Dasaratha continued: ‘I was greatly troubled by the brahmarishi’s request, I admit this freely. What father would not be? Yet dharma demanded I obey. The quandary might have gone unresolved even now, except that Guru Vashishta, the venerable and infinitely wise mentor of my line, offered a brilliantly simple suggestion. It is on his advice that I do what I do now.’
Maharaja Dasaratha turned in his place, addressing his next words to Brahmarishi Vishwamitra directly.
‘Pranaam, mahadev, you whose penance exalted our entire race and inspired us all. You whose devotion won the admiration of mighty Brahma himself, who saw fit to grant you the mastery of Brahman, the force that created, sustains and nourishes the universe. I bow before you, great one.’
Dasaratha matched his words with actions, bending his head in a saprem namaskar. Straightening up with folded hands, he continued:
‘My answer to your request for guru-dakshina is this, great one. You ask for Prince Rama. I say, Prince Rama is not mine to give. He belongs to Ayodhya. To every one of us assembled here today. Because of his seniority and birth, he is the natural and true heir to the throne of Ayodhya. Rama does not belong to me alone, nor to his mother or family. He belongs to the people whom he is birth-sworn to serve all his natural life. Dharma itself demands that a member of the ruling dynasty places his people’s needs before his own. So even Rama himself cannot decide his actions purely for his own selfish benefit. He must act in the best interests of the people he serves. You ask me for the guru-dakshina of my son Rama. But I do not have first right over Rama. Ayodhya does. If you wish to have the services of Prince Rama, you must ask those whom he truly belongs to. Ask Ayodhya.’
And Maharaja Dasaratha gestured with both hands outflung to encompass the vast crowd seated on the banks of the Sarayu, and the great city around them.
THIRTY-ONE
‘Ayodhya!’
The voice of Brahmarishi Vishwamitra sliced through the pandemonium and uproar that had raged unabated for the past several minutes. If Maharaja Dasaratha’s announcement had had the effect of a blazing mashaal tossed into a field of dry straw then the legendary seer-mage’s single spoken word was a waterfall of icy water dousing the inferno. The crowd subdued itself with a great effort, remembered tales of the wrathful temper of seers impelling them to control their dismayed anxiety for the moment.
The brahmarishi gestured at Maharaja Dasaratha, who had seated himself on the palanquin throne once again and was draining a goblet of wine beneath the disapproving eyes of the royal vaids. ‘Your maharaja is wise indeed and greatly versed in dharma. He speaks truly. Prince Rama Chandra belongs to you, the people he was born to serve. And it is you who must decide whether or not my demand for guru-dakshina should be fulfilled. But before you do so, you must know that he will not be risking his life for the successful fulfilment of my yagna alone. This mission that he will be called on to execute is for the greater good of all humankind at large, including Ayodhya.’
The seer-mage raised his towering staff over his head. ‘But I am no statesman or liege. My meaning will be best conveyed by giving you a glimpse of what might unfold lest my words go unheeded. The images I am about to show you will speak for themselves. I give you, the invasion of Ayodhya.’
At the words, Rama started. Lakshman, standing beside his brother, noticed a change come over him. Rama stared transfixed at the brahmarishi, a haunted, desolate look on his face. It was as if his brooding wariness of this morning had been in anticipation of this very thing.
As the crowd muttered and shifted uneasily, Vishwamitra chanted aloud a mantra too arcane and complex for any Brahmin to decipher. Dark thunderclouds appeared in the sky above, converging as suddenly as crows on a fallen fledgling. The day turned from bright morning to dusky twilight in the space of an eye-blink. The air grew thick and heavy, like the air during an electric thunderstorm. Lakshman’s skin tingled with a peculiar stinging sensation, like the time he had brushed against poisonleaf as a small boy. From the way the mantris nearby were rubbing their arms and necks, he guessed everyone felt the same way. The scent of damp rotting earth filled his nostrils, clogging his nasal passages.
As Vishwamitra reached the end of his incantation, lightning exploded in the skies, accompanied immediately by the crashing of thunder so deafening that people cringed and cried out, covering their heads in fear. Children had begun to bawl across the field, dogs howled, elephants trumpeted in alarm and stomped their feet, camels rolled their eyes and foamed at the mouth, monkeys chittered madly and leaped from tree to tree in the thicket downstream. The easterners in the crowd—visitors from Banglar, and the other far-flung areas of the kingdom— looked around in stark terror, fearing one of the awful natural calamities that plagued that part of India; a typhoon perhaps, or a tidal wave, even though Ayodhya was hundreds of yojanas away from any ocean.
Lakshman was startled by the sound of an agonised groan. He saw Rama drop to his knees like a man who had been clubbed on the back of the head, eyes tight shut, teeth clenched, hands bunched into fists, bending over until his forehead touched the swaying tips of the grass.
‘Bhai?’ Lakshman bent down beside Rama. He touched Rama’s shoulder and was shocked to find it fever-hot and clammy with sweat. ‘What’s wrong? Are you—’
Rama’s eyes opened wide, rolling up to the skies. Lakshman reared back in fright. A cry exploded from deep within Rama’s belly, less a human scream than the anguished howl of some primitive animal. The cry was lost in the crashing of thunder, but Lakshman was too shaken by what he had seen in Rama’s eyes to realise that his brother’s startling behaviour was being mirrored in the ranks of the PFs and other Kshatriya warriors throughout the field. Yet even these anguished howls went unnoticed in the mêlée of terrified panic that had erupted. In moments, a happy celebration had turned into a nightmare.
And above the chaos, the brahmarishi’s voice rang out, reverberating amid the echoes of thunder that rolled down from the boiling ocean of clouds.
Vishwamitra reached the end of his second mantra, and as abruptly as the chaos had begun, it ended.
Every man, woman, child and animal in Ayodhya froze.
One moment they were a mob filled with fear and panic, on the verge of running amok and causing needless harm to one another and themselves, terrified by the nightmare illusions perpetuated by the seer’s sorcery. The next they were still as statues, frozen in the attitudes in which they had been at the instant the mantra took effect.
Lakshman bending over to help Rama. Rama on his knees, fists raised to the sky, mouth open in a howl of anguish, eyes staring at some as yet unseen horror. Bharat and Shatrugan, standing together, one looking east, the other west, hands on their bows, ready to fight as always.
Brahmins frozen in the act of bending to kiss the ground in admiration and awe of Vishwamitra’s mastery of Brahman. Kshatriyas with faces contorted in fear and disgust at the sorcery unfolding around them. (Warriors always abhorred magic, Guru Vashishta had taught the young princes, because you cannot fight what you cannot understand. That was why it was so important for a Kshatriya to learn much more than mere warcraft.) Vaisyas, sudras, ordinary citizens, mothers and babes in arms, aged couples leaning on the strong young shoulders of their grown offspring, large extended families of as many as a hundred members accustomed to living beneath a single roof, now joining hands in a human chain, taking comfort from the presence of their parivar at this terrifying moment, devdasis and purohits, mochees and dhobis, sutaars and sitar players, kavees and carvers, archers and fletchers, blacksmiths and forgers, masons and philosophers, architects and money-lenders, halwais and hawaldars … all stood, sat or lay frozen in place, protected now from riot or panic-driven accidents by the seer-mage’s magic, able to do nothing but watch as the brahmarishi’s enormous sound-and-light show unfolded before them.
First came the darkness. Pitch-black as a crow’s feather. As a lock of Rama’s hair. With the darkness, a complete absence of sound, more terrible than any normal human silence.
Then, with the mellifluous artistry of a stage musician producing a taal for a Sanskrit drama—an epic tragedy perhaps, the doomed love story of Dushyanta and Sakuntala or the blood-drenched romance of Vasavadatta, or some older, more arcane and pagan tale of blood and terror and love gone wrong—the wind began to keen. It was a nerve-racking sound, like the noise of a stone being scraped across glass very hard and slowly. Yet it had its own arcane rhythm, as though the invisible stage musician was pounding his tabla to a frenzied climax.
And then, rising above the intolerable keening of the wind, a strange, unnatural sound like nothing heard before by any of the citizens gathered on the riverbank. Only the warriors and veterans present understood what this new sound meant. And it was good that they were frozen immobile, or else they would have rushed to arms.
It was the sound of an invading army.
Like an enraged wild boar breaking free of a thorn bush, the asura army emerged from the Southwoods.
They crawled, ran, leaped, flew, rode, slithered and seeped out of the black forest, exploding on to the south bank of the Sarayu like a plague.
Their numbers were beyond counting. An army of ants would not have been more numerous. Vishwamitra’s earlier estimates, given in the sabha hall, were modest if anything. There were enough creatures of the netherworld assembling on the far bank to turn the earth black for a dozen yojanas in every direction, an area of a hundred square Western miles. Even if viewed from Chand, the earth’s moon, the asura army’s progress would be visible, like a seething carpet creeping amoeba-like across the land, a gigantic primordial force that consumed everything in its path.
For a moment the asuras stood on the south bank and viewed the great prize they had come so far in search of: Ayodhya the Unconquerable. Rakshasas, Danavs, Daityas, Pisacas, Yaksas, and every crossbreed thereof feasted their alien eyes on the goal that had eluded every invading army for a millennium.
And then, with one bone-rattling, blood-boiling cry, they charged down the hill.
And the rape of Ayodhya began.
THIRTY-TWO
Rama recovered the use of his limbs with an exhalation of breath that threatened to drain him of life itself. He sucked in fresh air as needily as a disoriented infant taking its first independent breath. The cool winter-spring air was as blessed as a mother’s touch. The warmth of the sun on his bare shoulders and face was a benediction by a kindly god. Across the field, lakhs of Ayodhyans were recovering too. All kept glancing up and around to make sure the sorcery was truly over and they were back in the real, normal world once more. Babies and immature children had been shielded from the experience, and now they blinked and gaped dumbly, as if woken from a brief nap. The smell of wet grass and damp earth remained like a pall over all.
After giving his audience time to recover and reassure itself that the nightmare show was really over, Vishwamitra spoke again, his pervasive voice rolling out across the field, commanding rapt attention. He was the puppet-master, they were his puppets as well as his audience. Never before had such a display of Brahman sorcery ever been witnessed or heard of by any of those present. Rishis and self-styled seers were mouthing mantras of praise for the brahmarishi, praying that some vestige of his incomprehensible power might rub off on them. Power alms for the powerless. The Kshatriyas, especially those warriors who had been stricken to their core the way Rama had—if not as intensely, for none had felt quite what he had felt—looked around with haunted expressions, unable to believe that those terrible sights of death and destruction had been only an illusion. The seer’s magic had not spared the viewers the horrific details, but his mantra did guard their minds from the total breakdown that could afflict anyone confronted by such horrors. Sudras and vaisyas, commoners and soldiers, nobility and their servants, all bore the same shocked and stunned expressions as they realised the implications of what they had just seen. Even Maharaja Dasaratha, rubbing his own bleary eyes and silently cursing seers and their sorcery, was shaken out of his complacency. In that moment, he realised as he looked around at his bewildered people, Ayodhya was totally united, all caste, class and other petty differences forgotten as they turned their eyes up to stare in hushed awe at the seer-mage.