‘A dream,’ Dasaratha repeated for the third time. He looked up at Bharat, who was still massaging his feet. He reached out and touched his son’s hand as if unsure whether he was real or a figment of his nightmare.
‘Bharat,’ he said slowly, wonderingly. ‘My son.’
‘Yes, Father, I’m right here.’
Dasaratha raised his eyes to Kausalya. A light of hope shone in his pupils. ‘It was all a dream. Rama and Lakshman are still in the palace. Playing Holi. They never went to the Bhayanakvan. They aren’t gone to fight asuras. They’re right here, safe and sound, in their beds, asleep.’
Bharat saw Kausalya-maa stiffen. He couldn’t see her face from where he sat but he could sense the pain in her heart. He didn’t know what he might have said had the question been posed to him. Might he have lied rather than tell his father the bitter truth? It was obvious that the maharaja was delirious and intensely troubled.
Kausalya spoke softly. ‘No, my lord. They have indeed gone to the Southwoods. To fight asuras. They are under the protection of Brahmarishi Vishwamitra and are well armed and equipped. They will return home soon, safely.’
Dasaratha cried out and put a hand up to his face, as if to ward off a blow. As he cringed in misery, Bharat’s eyes grew moist. He couldn’t bear to see his father like this.
‘Father,’ he said. ‘Rama is the best bowman in the kingdom. He’s better than even Shatrugan and I. He’ll come back safely. I know he will.’
Dasaratha stopped crying. He uneovered his face, his hands clutching his chest instead, and looked at his son. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said faintly. ‘He is best.’
Kausalya watched Dasaratha for a moment longer. The serving girl brought in some pomegranate juice and diced fruit. Kausalya told her to set it all down by the beside, then dismissed her. She went out backwards, starting in dismay at he maharaja.
After a moment, Kausalya turned to Bharat. ‘Putra. Your father needs to be alone for some time. Why don’t you retire to your bedchamber and take some rest. You can come see him first thing in the morning.’
‘And you, Maa?’
‘I will stay with him a little while longer. To tend to his needs.’
Bharat wanted to protest, to stay and try to nurse his father back to health, but he understood that Kausalya-maa wanted to be alone with his father for some reason. It was her right and privilege. He nodded and bent to touch her feet, taking her ashirwaad one more time before he left the room.
She touched his head affectionately. ‘Ayushmaanbhav, bete.’
Kausalya waited until Bharat had passed out of hearing range before she leaned forward. ‘Dasa?’
He was staring dully at the far wall. Unseeing.
‘Dasa, what is it? What was the dream you just had? Why did it trouble you so?’
He turned slowly towards her. Still unseeing.
She reached out and touched his cheek. His stubbled skin was fever hot and damp with sweat.
‘Look at me, Dasa. It’s me, Kausalya.’
He looked at her, focusing for the first time since he had awoken. ‘My beloved Kausalya.’ Tears welled up in his eyes again.
‘Tell me about it. It will make it easier to forget. Tell me your dream.’
He stared at her for a long moment, then looked over her shoulder at the tray the serving girl had brought in. She saw his line of vision and turned, picking up the juice and offering it to him.
He took it and sipped, barely wetting his lips. It seemed to make him feel better. She waited for him to speak.
‘Satyakaam,’ he said at last.
She looked at him.
‘The curse of Satyakaam.’
She scanned her memory. Who was Satyakaam? An asura whom Dasaratha had fought in the Last War? A mortal enemy? Some would-be usurper? A challenger to the throne? A noble who had betrayed him? But she couldn’t connect the name to any memory. She had no recollection of any Satyakaam.
‘Who was he?’ she asked gently.
He looked at the juice as if surprised to find himself holding it. He gave her the bowl and she put it aside carefully. Perhaps later, when he had unburdened his mind, she would get him to take some nourishment. For now, he seemed to need to talk, to relieve his mind of this ugly dream, or memory, or mixture of the two.
‘I loved to hunt,’ he began. ‘Before I met you, when I was young and strong and brainless. I loved to hunt more than anything else in the world. Except maybe women.’
He remembered to whom he was speaking and hesitated.
She shook her head, smiling. ‘I’m a woman too. You love me, that’s true.’
He smiled back tentatively. But the smile barely moved his lips. He went on after a moment, more rapidly now, as if eager to get the telling over with. ‘Once I was deep in the forest. Hot on the trail of a Nilgiri stag. A big one. I had been after it for the better part of a full day. It was evening, almost sundown. I was tired and exasperated at not having downed it yet. My companions were searching for me; I could hear them calling faintly in the distance, miles away. There was a princess, I think. A beauty. I wanted to return with a trophy. Not empty-handed.’
She listened. She saw how involved he was in the telling. As if the story was more than just a story. How his hands, face and body moved and jerked spasmodically, trying to participate in the telling. This incident meant something to him. Something very important. She had never heard him speak of it before.
‘Just when I thought I had lost it, I heard a sound up ahead. I went carefully through the bushes. It was thick and close there, the undergrowth. Tiger territory. I was on edge, my bow strung, my arrow ready to be loosed if I so much as breathed on the string. There was a waterhole up ahead. I could smell the water, and the odours of the animals that came to drink there. Many different animals. I heard an animal drinking, the wet slapping sounds, like a large stag’s tongue might make when slurping up water thirstily.’
He clenched a fist, drawing back his right hand, raising his left. ‘I judged its position, behind a berry bush. And loosed my arrow.’
He dropped his hands, his head falling forward. When he raised his face again, he was crying once more. ‘I went down to the waterhole, knowing I had hit it squarely. I found him there, his earthen pot fallen by his side, shattered into two halves. The arrow was in his throat, a mortal wound. He was clutching it, gasping for breath, for life. Life that I had stolen. Because I wanted a trophy. For a princess.’
He stopped. Kausalya felt her own tears welling now. She could see how much anguish it cost him to tell the tale. She suspected he had never spoken of it before to anyone, ever. Had bottled the knowledge in his chest all these many years where it had festered and seethed. Until today, when it had burst free, loosed like an ill-timed arrow in search of a victim.
‘He tried to tell me something. I tried to beg his forgiveness. He pointed, unable to speak. Gestured at the water, at the broken pot. I held him until he died. He was a strong, handsome young man. In the prime of life. Like myself.
‘After he had passed away, I tried to understand what he had been trying to show me. I went the way he had pointed. I found a small path, worn from use. From his daily trips to the waterhole and back. At the end of the path, I found a tiny shack. Barely a cottage. A hut. Inside the hut were an old couple, weak and ailing. Both were blind.’
Dasaratha passed a hand across his eyes. It came away dry, but he squeezed his eyes intensely, as if trying to release more tears, unable to understand why more would not come. He shook his head, still grieving for the death of that young man he had shot, forty or more years ago.
‘I told them what I had done. I tried to explain that I was a rajkumar of Ayodhya, heir to the sunwood throne. Money was no object. I would see to it that they were taken care of for the rest of their lives. They cursed me.’
Kausalya reared back, like a child stung by a snake. Dasaratha nodded, understanding her reaction.
‘Cursed. They said that they had little time left to live. The only thing that kept them alive was the knowledge that they had such a fine young son. That he would go on after their passing away, would take a wife some day, would continue their line. Now, with him gone, they had nothing left to live for. What good was my money? They wanted their son back.’
Dasaratha hung his head in shame. ‘I left there in mortal fear. Their curse rang in my ears. I found my hunting party. Returned to the hut, intending to take the old couple back to the palace with me, ask my father Aja to decide what to do next.’
He raised his eyes to the ceiling, desolate. ‘When I returned, they were both dead. They had taken their own lives by chewing on a poisonroot plant.’
Kausalya placed her hand on his. He gripped it tightly, taking comfort in the contact.
Then he shrugged. ‘And that was the end of it.’
She shook her head. ‘Not the end. The curse. That was what gave you that bad dream, wasn’t it? What was the curse they laid upon you. What was it, Dasa?’
He looked at her levelly. A strange kind of calm had descended upon him, as if the telling of the tale had burned out his anxiety and anguish the way a fever burned out a disease.
‘They said that one day I too would lose a son the way they had lost theirs.’
Kausalya’s hand flew to her mouth.
‘That it would happen when I was old and ailing like they were. When I needed him most. That he would be brutally murdered the way I had murdered Satyakaam, not even knowing or seeing the face of his enemy.’
Kausalya rose from the bedside. ‘No! NO!’
Dasaratha spread his hands helplessly. ‘My dream was of Rama in the Bhayanak-van. He was alone, separated from Lakshman and the brahmarishi. And that was when the asuras attacked him from behind, from above, from all around. He was surrounded, and torn apart by the beasts. Torn to shreds.’
‘No, Dasa! That is not Rama’s fate! Rama will come back to us safe and sound. Alive!’
Dasaratha bowed his head. ‘I pray that you are right.’ He looked at her beseechingly. ‘But if you are right, then what of the curse of Satyakaam? What about my karma?’
***
Manthara offered Kaikeyi a thali full of paans. Kaikeyi looked at the little betelnut-leaf squares stuffed with an assortment of spices, and squealed: ‘Paan! I love paan!’
She took the largest, plumpest one and stuffed it into her mouth. Sticky sweet juices spilled out of the corner of her mouth, dripping on to the blouse of her sari. She wiped it away carelessly, spreading the stain further.
‘Umm, this is wonderful, Manthara. What’s in it?’
Manthara smiled. If she told Kaikeyi what was in these paans, the second queen would vomit out the entire mouthful. She replied cryptically: ‘Everything you like. And a little special something of my own.’
Yes, my dearest. A little Brahmin boy’s blood. Sanctified by our Lord of Lanka at my last yagna. Does that taste better now?
She took a paan too. The smallest one, made specially for her. She hated having to eat a morsel more than was absolutely essential to survive, as her bony arms and limbs testified so eloquently.
Kaikeyi watched her eat the miniature paan with wide, surprised eyes.
‘Manthara? You eating a paan? What’s the occasion? There must be an occasion if you’re eating paan!’
Manthara waited until she had chewed most of the paan. She resisted the urge to spit out the betelnut juice. If she spat, she would spit out the sanctified blood too. She forced herself to swallow the whole thing down, juice and all. Then she answered Kaikeyi’s question.
‘It’s been a very good day for us, my queen. A very good day indeed. And an even more fruitful night.’
She had just heard from her informants about the tamasha in the dungeons. It had been the perfect nightcap to an almost perfect day.
Kaikeyi mistook Manthara’s meaning. ‘Yes, it went just as you said. I did as you told me to do. Confronted Dasaratha and Kausalya and gave them both a piece of my mind. And I told them what you said to say, that Bharat would be the next king of Ayodhya, not Rama.’ She smiled, displaying a mouthful of red-stained teeth. ‘You should have seen Kausalya’s face. She thought I was going to spear her!’ She chuckled, spraying flecks of paan leaf. ‘I almost did too!’
‘A little more control next time,’ Manthara warned. ‘You must not use physical violence against anyone. You saw how much more effective it was to threaten the maharaja emotionally? It brought him to his knees more effectively than even a spear throw. And this way, nobody can blame you for what was after all just a family squabble. You were only venting your natural, inevitable reaction to your son being passed over for the coronation.’