SITA’S SISTER (23 page)

And with these last words, Ram requested Sumantra to start the journey. Urmila saw the chariot move slowly through the thick throng, the people refusing to let their prince go. They followed him, many running after the chariot. From her palace window, Urmila saw the chariot gradually gather speed, leaving the crowd trailing behind them, a resounding lament of anguish echoing through the breaking skies and darkening the gathering clouds. As she watched the chariot become as a distant speck against a cloud of dust in the widening horizon, Urmila heard a wail from inside the palace.

Her father-in-law had collapsed, covering his face with his hands, as if trying to hide his face from the world or not wanting to see what he had just witnessed. His beloved son had left him and he could not take it anymore. Kaikeyi rushed to help him get up.

‘Don’t touch me, you venomous woman!’ he shrieked in rage. ‘From this moment, I disown you! I hate and loathe you, O sinful wife. You are no wife of mine now and I renounce you!’

Kaikeyi blanched, struck as if he had hit her. Her hands dropped from him.

‘Take me away from her palace, Kausalya! Where are you?’ he cried plaintively as Kausalya rushed to his side. ‘Take me to your room. Let me die there, for now I know I shall die… O Kausalya, where are you? Where are you, my Ram?’ cried the old king, rubbing his eyes, blinking through the tears rolling down his sagging, gaunt cheeks. ‘Why is the world so dark to me now? Is it because my Ram, the light of my life, has gone?’ he asked piteously, staggering precariously and stumbling.

Urmila swiftly caught him on time, before he crashed to the marble floor. The three queens helped her hold him straight, but he was unconscious. As instructed, he was carried to Kausalya’s palace and he lay there for several hours, as silent and inert as the day had suddenly become, stretching long and interminable.

Urmila could not believe that so much had happened in such a short time. Just a few hours ago, she had been dressing up her sister for the coronation. Just a few hours ago, she had been with Lakshman, in his arms…she tore the image from her mind’s eye, forcing her eyes to shut and open to see a new, bleak world. Everything looked the same, nothing seemed the same.

She had been in Kausalya’s chamber before, not as often as Sita though. It was not as flamboyant as Kaikeyi’s but grander than the Mithila palace nevertheless. It was dark and gloomy but right now, it looked defeated and sombre. Even the parrot in her room had stopped squawking. He was removed from the chamber lest he disturbed the fitfully sleeping king. Kausalya looked completely crushed, sitting beside the prostrate king, her lined face anguished and exhausted, her eyes bleary and unfocused with grief.

The king woke up several hours later, late in the day. He was barely conscious. ‘Where is Ram? Where are you, Kausalya? I cannot see…let me touch you, are you there?’ he whispered, his eyes open but unseeing.

‘He has gone blind! O Lord, what more now?’ cried Kausalya, gripping his frail hand tightly, both of them coming close again in their grief and seeking strength from each other. The king’s sight had gone as surely as Ram had from his life.

‘How am I to console him when I cannot console myself?’ she sobbed. ‘How am I to live without Ram? And what words of solace can I offer my husband?’

It was only Sumitra who could give some comfort to the distraught Kausalya. ‘Why are you mourning, Kausalya? What is there to grieve about?’ she asked, her tone gentle but firm. ‘You have always been proud of your son, so be proud of him now too. He will always be king—if not now, later—but by going to the forest and living a life of a tapasvi, he is doing what no prince has ever done before. That is what makes Ram unique. He is meant for greatness. Recognise it and be proud that you bore such an exemplary son. Which son would relinquish the crown just to obey his father’s word? Which prince would renounce the kingdom to guard the king’s honour? Ram is a hero—be proud of him, don’t grieve for him. He is meant for glory and greatness and a higher salvation. Lakshman saw it in him, and decided to follow his footsteps to be with him in his new difficult path. He will see to it that Ram and Sita don’t come to any harm. I am proud of my heroic son and shall not waste tears of grief but instead wait for that great day when they return glorious and unconquered as my brave daughter-in-law Urmila said. Look at her, she should be grieving too. They have just been married and she will be away from Lakshman for the coming fourteen years…can’t you see her plight? Yet she has not shed a tear of self-pity.’

Urmila felt a twinge of embarrassment. She did not feel she had accomplished much or performed a great deed—she had accepted the situation with as much dignity and sagacity she could manage.

The wise woman that she was, she heard her mother-in-law allay Kausalya with further words of reassurance. ‘Kausalya, you are a mother of an exceptional man, behave accordingly. You should give strength to your ageing husband and the other women in the palace, but breaking down thus does not befit a queen, nor does it befit the mother of a hero.’

The king continued to lapse between consciousness and unconsciousness in brief spells through the day, his health sinking and his will and eyesight destroyed. But his hate and rage toward his young wife could not be doused. He refused to meet her, forbidding her with the most cruel words he could muster.

‘Go away, wicked woman, who has brought ruin to my son and family! How could I ever fall in love with you and your scheming ways? I must have been mad or intoxicated. What an uxorious fool I have been and the world will now laugh at me for that! You are a temptress, an evil serpent, a monster, a witch!’ he said, pushing her hand away as she tried to arrange the pillows more comfortably for him. ‘Do not pretend to care when all you wanted was the throne for your son. I, the king of all kings, the father of a good son, grovelled at your feet, I begged you to take back your terrible wishes but you turned away and threatened to kill yourself! And now you are surely and slowly killing me…or is that part of your bigger plan? To have me dead, so that mother and son can enjoy the crown and the throne?’ he asked viciously. ‘How could you do this to an old father in his last, tottering days? How could you do this to Kausalya and Sumitra? Forcing them to stay away from their sons while you bask with your son in power and glory? How could you separate a bride from her young husband, the pure-hearted Lakshman who, out of deep love for Ram, accompanied him in his fourteen-year exile? Can you not see the selfless love all around you? That was how my family was, how you were…I will never forgive you or him. But why do I berate poor Bharat?’ the old king cried. ‘If I know him well, he will be as repulsed as all of us are from your evil intentions. He will hate you and be ashamed of you. Oh foolish woman! He loves Ram truly, as once you pretended to! I wonder if he will ever agree to your terms, but if does accept the throne, Kausalya and Sumitra, please see to it that these two evil people are nowhere near my funeral. I do not want him to perform my last rites. If he does my obsequies, my departed soul and spirit could never accept it—so please stay away, merry widow!’

Kaikeyi took in his wrath stoically: she did not allow herself to be affected by it.

Instead, she ordered Sumantra to inform Bharat to return to Ayodhya as early as possible and to start making arrangements for his coronation; it would be grander and not a haphazard, hurried one like the one organized for Ram, she bitingly added.

‘How I am or how I should be, does not matter. What you do, does,’ she retorted unruffled. ‘You had given me two boons which I had foolishly forgotten about and asked for after so many years but which I have got after much effort, drama and tussle. In the process, I have earned your ire and hatred and everyone else’s,’ she shrugged, looking pointedly at Kausalya. ‘So be it. You call it evil manipulation, great king, but I call it self-preservation. How could you make Ram crown prince when you had once promised my father that it would be my son who would be heir apparent? Why was Bharat sent off to Kekeya so conveniently and the coronation announced during his absence? And how come Ram’s coronation was planned under a shroud of secrecy and I was not even told about it?’ she demanded, her eyes flashing. ‘You broke my trust, not me. O great king, do not preach to me about ethics and morality when it was my son and I who would have been victims of your political designs but for my timely action,’ she said contemptuously. ‘As Bharat’s mother, I protected his rights which he was being deprived of through your pretence of biased love and kindliness. I saved my son from injustice and in the bargain, if Ram has been subjected to it, it’s only fair. And ironical.’

Urmila, even in her dull anguish, still could not believe the drastic transformation of the queen. She was unrecognizable—gone was her warmth, her affectionate lovingness and her integrity. All for political power? Who had corrupted her?… And before she could finish the question in her mind, Urmila knew the answer. There was only one person who had the wile and the natural endowment of chicanery to persuade the kindest soul to such evil. Manthara.

What had Manthara told Kaikeyi that she got persuaded to do the unthinkable? That old, wily woman was nowhere to be seen near the sick king’s bed. It had been four days since the king had given up food and water, and he was fast sinking. Instead, Manthara was with Kaikeyi who had been forbidden to enter the chamber. They were occupied with preparations for the coronation ceremony of Bharat. Messengers had been sent to Kekeya to bring him back but without letting him know the true reason for his premature return.

Urmila got to meet Manthara soon enough. Or, rather, the old maid made it a point to come and meet her. ‘Queen Kaikeyi has called you to oversee the arrangements of the coronation puja,’ she announced. ‘You would know best since you almost did one for Ram recently,’ she added nastily, with cloying sweetness.

‘I have to check on the king’s medication every hour, so please let the queen know I will not be able to assist her in any of the preparations,’ retorted Urmila, her tone tart. ‘Besides, Ma Kausalya is not feeling too well either, so I have to look after her, too. And while you see yourself out, Manthara, tell the maid Mrugnaini to keep the water for boiling and not loiter around, gossiping and spreading malicious lies,’ she continued smoothly, turning her back deliberately on the old woman.

She heard a sharp hiss of breath. The old woman’s eyes became fixed in an incredulous stare, fury climbing all over her mottled face. ‘You arrogant girl! You still dare to talk to me in your high and mighty manner!’ she screeched. ‘Who are you, insolent woman? Just an abandoned wife at the mercy of Queen Kaikeyi and Bharat. You will have to obey them, not your other mothers-in-law who are best seen tending to the dying king. They cannot protect you or your absentee husband whom you were so proud of! Where is he? He left you for his brother! And it’s a joke that you once so loftily claimed him to be the man most feared in the palace! Bah! Where is he now? Fetching roots for his dear brother or pressing his tired feet?’ she asked, malice dripping from every word she uttered from her toothless mouth.

Urmila remained unruffled, secretly pleased that she had managed to anger the crooked old lady and shake her from her smug diplomacy. ‘I am not in a habit of discussing my personal life with maids,’ she said icily, with all the arrogance she could muster. ‘Nor am I Ma Kaikeyi who foolishly believes whatever you garble. You are just an old, disgruntled woman who is happy seeing others unhappy. And you know precisely how to make the happy unhappy. You may leave, Manthara. Now. With that dim witted spy of yours—that good-for-nothing Mrugnaini. You have them installed everywhere, haven’t you? Kamini at Mandavi’s palace, Pranjali at Ma Kausalya’s; you breed them well—all as ratty and rotten as you.’

Manthara went white, her deviousness had been exposed, but she stood her ground, her voice rising shrilly and her eyes reflecting a peculiar, murderous glassiness. ‘Last time you and your insolent husband threw me out of this very room,’ she spat, ‘this time you shall hear me out. What did you tell Mandavi, Kirti and Sita about me that they started avoiding me? They used to give me the respect I deserved till you put some unfunny ideas into their heads. Do you think you are very clever, that you are the leader amongst your sisters? You can never beat me!’ Manthara’s face was congested purple in spite. ‘I’ll have my way…I
am
having my way! See how things are falling perfectly into place. Just like I managed to create a rift between the queens, I shall see to it that you sisters fight in the palace for the next many years. Mandavi will return and she will be queen as she so desired, and that will distance her from you and Kirti. Sita is already out and I can wean Kirti away from you. After all, she is Mandavi’s blood sister, not yours. You are just a sad, lonely figure who will have no one to turn to, neither your sisters nor your precious husband! Vengeance is mine, dear!’ she cackled in sadistic pleasure, her eyes shining with hate and happiness.

Urmila answered calmly, ‘What vengeance are you talking about, Manthara? Vengeance against whom? Us or Kaikeyi? For, you have caused her the most harm. And you call yourself her well-wisher!’ she scoffed. ‘You are her worst enemy. Does your conniving brain still not realize that you have just a few days to shout your triumphs? Fear the day when Bharat returns. Not only will he not accept the throne but he’ll throw you out and hate his mother forever. You are smug that Bharat will obey his mother and be the king. But that just shows that you don’t know him at all. He might be your favourite but he doesn’t favour you. He tolerates you for his mother’s sake—just like all the others in the palace do. Fortunately for you, Bharat is as noble as Ram and will never hurt you but be careful,’ she warned. ‘Also, I have just one question for you—you talk about devising a rift amongst us sisters and the queens, but could you do that with the brothers?’