‘I fear the crimes of my karma will be visited upon my sons. And the cost will be more than they can bear to pay.’ He twisted his head in anguish, hand limp in her grasp and growing clammy with sweat. ‘I fear I have done more wrongs than rights, that the tally of my karma will not make up for the sacred duty I have been unable to fulfil, that all my life’s sins will be visited upon Rama and Bharat and Shatrugan and Lakshman like a plague of vengeance. I see the signs already, in the intrusion of the rakshasa, the seer taking away Rama and Lakshman, the resurgence of Ravana and his hordes … I tell you, Kausalya, all this is my karma coming back to haunt me. It is the sum of my past misdeeds.’
He choked on his own emotions, and she had to offer him a few sips of water before he could continue. ‘You don’t know half the things I’ve done, the things I’ve said. My promises to Kaikeyi … the two boons …’
He turned his face away, unable to go on. The nascent light cast a pallor on his face, making it seem deathlike in its agony. ‘Kausalya, I tell you, it is the beginning of the end of all we love and hold dear … It is the day of our reckoning, and the price of my past misdeeds will bury us all alive like a juggernaut … what have I done! Deva!’
He buried his face in his hands and shook, weeping.
Enough. This was too much. It was no way for a maharaja to behave.
‘Dasa!’
He stared at her, startled by her loudness.
‘Are you dead yet?’
He blinked, taken aback. ‘What? Dead? No, of course not, but …’
She emphasised each word as she spoke, giving him time to understand it implicitly. ‘Then rise. Awaken. Live. Prepare your sons for ascension, meet your people and give them confidence and assurance, ensure the sustenance and survival of all that you love and cherish. Do what you can, what you must.’
He stared at her as she continued.
‘What’s done is done. We cannot change our past karma. But what we do now, this moment, and every moment hereafter, is in our hands. Do it! Change what needs changing. You have already shown you can do it by coming to me on the morning of Holi feastday. By repairing the broken wings of our lost love.’
He looked at her uncertainly. ‘Did I succeed?’
‘You know you did. I would still be here by your side even if you had never apologised or asked my forgiveness. It is my duty as a wife. But I would not have opened my arms to you that day. In the act of loving you, I was forgiving you. Surely you knew that?’
‘Yes,’ he said. There was an acceptance in his tone that reassured her. His arm gained strength, his skin stopped exuding sweat. ‘I made you suffer for fifteen years; you took me back in fifteen counts.’
‘Fool,’ she said, softly this time. ‘Foolish, foolish Dasaratha. I never let you go in the first place.’
He stared at her, then nodded abruptly, trying to cover his surprise without success. ‘I knew that.’
‘Then know this too. It may not be as easy to repair all else the way you repaired our bond. It will be very difficult indeed, but it is possible. You can walk the road of light again. The devas have seen fit to let you live. Use the time wisely. Set your affairs right, put your house in order.’
He was silent for a long time. They sat that way, the light from the arched window growing steadily until it seemed the devas were issuing a benediction over her words and his resolve. She said no more. He needed only prompting, not advice. His was the folly of the wise man who had been momentarily blinded by the gaudy brilliance of his own excessive thoughtfulness. It required only a gentle nudge to bring him back to his true path.
Finally, he sat up, wincing and squinting. He put his left hand over her two hands and his own, then tightened his grip again and met her eyes squarely.
‘With you by my side, I will not falter now.’
And gently, like the first light falling on the opening blossoms of flowers outside, he kissed her brow, smudging her sindhoor ever so slightly. Outside, the light brightened into the first rosy flush of sunrise.
THREE
The deer shuddered in the darkness of the peepal thicket. Vines and creepers swayed in the rising wind, brushing its flanks. It bared its teeth and snapped at them. Its musk, the precious kasturi that mortals sought for its use in the making of perfumes and attars, continued to ooze, filling the forest with the rich, pungent odour of its condition.
The tiger was not long in coming. Despite its brush with the strange mortal, it had not lost the scent of the deer. That musky effusion was unmissable even in the midst of the rich scents of the recent rainfall. He found it within moments, skulking around an enormous peepal with vines as wildly profuse as a rishi’s matted locks, and came upon it from behind.
The deer was ready. It turned to face the tiger just before he leapt. His eyes narrowed, fixing it in the formidable death-stare that froze virtually any herbivore in its tracks, even frightening the ponderous bigfoot. This was his jungle, and he knew it. The deer ought to have been transfixed, staying motionless as the raja of the jungle leapt upon it, crushing it underfoot and ripping open its vitals, feeding on its steaming innards as life still fluttered within its tremulous breast.
Instead, the deer bared its teeth at the tiger and grinned.
The tiger froze.
The deer clacked its teeth. It was a strange action, unfamiliar to its kind, and the large teeth snapped together with a bone-jarring impact. Those white teeth were meant to tug at leaves and yank at stalks, not rip flesh and crack bone. But there was no mistaking the deer’s message. It was ready to fight.
The tiger paused, wondering at the folly of this pathetic herbivore. He had once attacked a doe protecting two young; that one had kicked viciously at his belly, trying to use her hoofs to tear his soft underbody open. He had dodged her with a simple side-step, snatched her by the neck and ripped her head off in one smooth motion. She had died still kicking. What did this foolish musth-deluded creature hope to achieve? A quicker death perhaps? Or a much slower, much more painful one?
He was already skittish from the encounter with the mortal. There had been something odd about that young two-legged human. That blue glow in his eyes. That aura of power. He was glad when the ancient one had stopped the fight. Mortals were dangerous beasts, by far the most dangerous of all. He had seen what havoc they could wreak with their fires and sharp slivers carved from tree trunks, and those shining metal claws they used in combat with one another. And the way they slaughtered one another but left the bodies to rot. Killing without feeding. Yes, mortals were dangerous and strange.
But he understood the deer. It was half out of its mind with musth, desperate while in heat. This was probably its first heat, judging from its youthful appearance. Although there was something about its eyes and stance that was odd, almost undeerlike. He dismissed these thoughts with the same careless ease with which he might swat away a swarm of bees. It was food, that was all. And it didn’t know enough to respect the approach of a life-taker. Foolish dumb thing. Soon she would face Yamraj, lord of death, and it would understand everything. By then, it mortal body would be in his eager belly, providing him with days of much-needed nourishment.
He sprang.
His leap was a short one, barely three yards. Yet he landed not on a bundle of squealing, terror-stricken deer-flesh, but on the forest floor, in a flurry of dust and rotted vines.
He swung around, seeking his prey. How could it possibly have moved so fast? He hadn’t taken his eyes off it for even an instant. Where was it? He turned a full circle, coming back to where he’d started, then turned again, unable to understand what had happened. His growls of frustration filled the jungle, sending small creatures skittering away in terror, causing a family of young langurs in the branches above to cling to each other fearfully.
He turned a third time, saliva dripping from his open jaws, and glimpsed a flash of movement on the trunk of the large peepal. He crouched, shoulders bunching instinctively. At first he took it for another cat, a panther perhaps. There was a large pack in this part of the jungle, and they preferred to stay in the trees.
But it wasn’t a panther.
It was the deer.
It was on the tree.
And it was … different.
Its rear end and skin colouring were still deer-like, speckled and lightly furred. But its upper half was completely different now, a form he knew all too well. Shaggy fur, an enormous head, bulging eyes with feline slitted pupils so much like his own, a double set of eyelids that shut horizontally as well as vertically, and that mouthful of teeth. What teeth! Even he was impressed by them. Their needle-sharpness and size put even his own magnificent bone-daggers to shame. What couldn’t he do if he had teeth like that! He could tear through the hide of a rhinoceros, those half-blind, short-tempered brutes. Or even bring down a bigfoot.
He raised his head, staring appreciatively at the creature that clung to the peepal tree, gazing down at him with a manic feral grin. He was too used to being the predator of this territory, quite unused to being the prey. He was distracted by the peculiar combination of species, neither wholly deer nor wholly rakshasi.
That was his mistake.
Supanakha didn’t bother to finish changing completely. Her lower half was still that of a deer, although even as the tiger stared up at her in wonderment, her flanks were widening, bones snapping and crackling as they expanded and changed shape before his amazed eyes. She leapt while her rear limbs were still hoofed.
She brought the tiger down before he could brace himself. He lost his balance and tumbled over on the forest floor, snarling in shocked anger at being attacked by a creature he had been stalking just a moment ago. For that brief instant, his belly was exposed to her.
She ripped him open from throat to groin, doing to him exactly what he had intended to do to her.
His roar of anguish and fury echoed through the jungle.
Then she held his flailing paws down, his fast-fading power no match for her rakshasi strength, dipped her head and ate greedily. It had been a long, long time since she had eaten tiger. It was as good as she remembered it.
***
Later, she slaked her thirst at a large, newly formed rain puddle. A nest of new-born cobras seethed and slithered in a rabbit hole nearby, their eggshells still slimy. She put her foot, now fully reformed in its hoary taloned rakshasi bulk, into the nest and watched them lunge instinctively, seeking to stab and inject her with the venom they had yet to develop. She picked them up with the same foot and made them an after-dinner sweet dish.
Her cousin arrived without warning. One moment she was licking her lipless mouth, washing the snake ichor and tiger blood from her chin and neck with splashes of water from the puddle, the next moment he was before her, obscuring her entire view.
Cousin.
She grinned happily up at him. ‘I thought you had forgotten about me. I called upon you last night.’
I thought I made myself clear the last time we spoke. I assumed you were capable of following my orders without needing to be watched over like a child-novice. Obviously I was wrong.
Her grin faded. She swiped at her chin, smearing fluids across her chest-fur. She stood, unable as ever to decide which of his many heads to address. Most of them looked angry and grim. Except for a pair on the left side, which looked distracted, as if they were taking care of other business even while dealing with her. She knew he could be in many places at once, and that just one head was sufficient to control his actions and speech in any one spot. But which one was in charge here and now? It was impossible to tell for sure, because most of the time the central head was the one that spoke directly, although the others all whispered and muttered to each other and to the central one constantly. It was like speaking to a council of ten men who were always bickering, each one of them capable of turning brutally violent at any moment.
Tiger got your tongue, Supanakha?
‘I … I don’t know what you mean. I did exactly as you asked. I followed the two princes of Ayodhya all the way, watched them invade Bhayanak-van and destroy all our cousins, including Tataka, which was a sight to see, I have to tell you. And I never interfered once! Not once! I did exactly as you told me to, Vijay!’
He swiped at her with almost careless ease. The impact was bone-shattering. She flew across the clearing, smashing against the trunk of a peepal with enough force to crack the two-hundred-year-old tree. She slid to the ground, tumbling on to her belly, dust filling her mouth, mingling with the blood. She spat out three jagged teeth, her jaw feeling as if it was filled with shards of glass.
Don’t use that name with me, foolish hag. And don’t play games with me either. You were to observe, not interfere. I thought I made that clear.
She cried out through her mouthful of agony, spraying blood and splinters of teeth. ‘But I didn’t interfere!’
A flash of brilliant crimson light exploded in her brain. She cringed, raising her taloned claws before her face. Then, slowly, she lowered her paws, taking in the changed surroundings.