The Ramayana (23 page)

Bharata sighed, “Guha, I have no rest until I see my brother before me.”

A few hours before dawn the prince lay on the ground, and some semblance of sleep stole over him. But his dreams were dark, and he tossed and turned beside Shatrughna, who also slept poorly at his side.

They were up before the sun the next day, and Guha came to them and said, “My oarsmen will ferry you across the river with your people.”

The princes, the queens—Kaikeyi had come because her safety could not be guaranteed in Ayodhya—Vasishta, and his rishis were taken across in a great riverboat called Swastika. Now they had Guha's hunters for guides, and went surely through the forest along the same trail Rama had taken. They spent one night very near where he had slept, and pressed on the next day, until, from a promontory, they saw Bharadvaja's asrama near the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna.

Bharata left his army a krosa from the hermitage. With Shatrughna and some ministers beside him, and Vasishta going before him, he climbed down the slope. When he neared the asrama he left the knot of ministers behind and walked in, taking only Vasishta with him.

Bharadvaja welcomed them with every show of affection; he made them sit by his side. When the ritual greetings were over between himself and Vasishta, he turned to Bharata. “You are king of Ayodhya now. What brings you to the forest? I would have thought you would be happy on the throne your mother won for you.”

Bharata said ruefully to Vasishta, “Look, Master. All the world, even the wisest in it, is convinced of my guilt.” To Bharadvaja he said, “You should not judge me like this, holy one; I am innocent. Rama is my brother. If you are so sad at his exile that you can hurt me without knowing the truth, how much greater my sorrow must be that my brother lives in the jungle. If you will direct me to him, I have come to crown Rama our king.”

Bharadvaja gazed at Bharata for a long moment, and then at Vasishta, who inclined his head to affirm what the prince said. Bharadvaja took Bharata's hands. “You have earned an exalted place for yourself in heaven. As for Rama, he has gone to Chitrakuta with Sita and Lakshmana. I will show you the way there tomorrow. But tonight, you, your great guru, and the rest of your party must stay with me.”

Bharata began to protest. But, his eyes twinkling, the rishi said, “My son, there was no need for you to have left your army so far away. Send someone to fetch your soldiers and your people. I want to entertain you all tonight.”

When the army and the people of Ayodhya arrived, Bharadvaja touched some sacred water with his fingers and invoked Viswakarman. At once a light appeared between earth and sky, illumining that hermitage. Within it stood the divine artisan. Bharadvaja said, “My lord, I want to entertain the people of Ayodhya tonight.”

As the sun set slowly, it seemed the asrama and everyone in it slipped through a twilight crack and came by Viswakarman's power into an unearthly realm. Many-colored lamps lit the darkening sky; these floated everywhere, and transformed the hermitage into a precinct of dreams.

The air was fragrant, and uncanny bliss swept the people of Ayodhya when they heard celestial music around them. They saw tall gandharvas playing on instruments more softly resonant and complex than any they had heard. The great elves sang in voices that brought visions to their enraptured listeners' eyes. Then there were unworldly apsaras, their beauty ineffable, who served Bharadvaja's guests and danced for them. And the wine and the food? One cannot begin to describe the divine fare that passed the mortal lips of the people of Ayodhya that night. Into the early hours, the feast continued, the singing, the dancing, and the joy.

At dawn, Bharata came to Bharadvaja and said, “My lord, as long as they live my people will remember your hospitality. But now we must press on and find my brother. I am afraid that not even the company of gandharvas and apsaras can long assuage Ayodhya's grief at being parted from Rama.”

The rishi described the way to Chitrakuta, exactly as he had done for Rama. He said, “I have heard he has built an asrama near the Mandakini.”

Dasaratha's queens came before the rishi for his blessing. They walked around him in pradakshina and stood without speaking, their heads bent and their hands folded.

Bharadvaja said, “Bharata, tell me which queen is which prince's mother.”

Bharata went to Kausalya and put his arm around her. “This is my mother Kausalya, who bore the noblest man ever born into the world. And this is mother Sumitra, who bore the mighty twins Lakshmana and Shatrughna.”

He did not go near Kaikeyi; he did not look at her. He said stiffly, “My father, Dasaratha, died because of a woman he loved like his very life. Out of her greed, she parted him from his eldest son. Oh, she is gentle and feminine to behold; but she is a devil. The third one, whose eyes are dry, who has not shed a tear these past days for her dead husband, is my mother Kaikeyi.”

And the prince heaved a sigh. Bharadvaja laid a hand on Bharata's arm. “The ways of fate are inscrutable, my son. Do not judge your mother so harshly. I can see far into time and I tell you there is a deep purpose behind Rama's exile. The Devas, the rishis, all the hosts of heaven and the races of the earth will profit from it one day. And the clutch of evil shall be loosened for an age. Yet great suffering must go before any great deed, and your mother is only an unwitting instrument of destiny. The way ahead is long; don't be hasty with your judgment.”

The army took a while to prepare itself for the march ahead; the people were still intoxicated with the night's magic. But once they thought of Rama, they were soon on their way. Through darkling forests and over fragrant hills they marched, following the Yamuna and fording other jungle streams. Bharata sensed his brother ahead of him; he saw Rama's trail clearly with his heart: a golden path.

On they marched, and the denizens of the wild were alarmed by the invasion of their privacy. Such a force had never come into this jungle before. Herds of deer scampered up steep hills, calling in alarm. Elephants stopped their lazy feeding to stare and then lumbered away, crashing through bamboo thickets. And overhead, another legion followed the army of Ayodhya, chattering down its displeasure: the langur tribes.

When they had marched some krosas along the southern bank of the midnight-blue Yamuna, when they had left the lone nyagrodha, Shyama, behind them, they came to the edge of a forest more dense than any they had seen yet, and dark as a thundercloud. Out of its heart there loomed a green massif. Its slopes were mantled with wildflowers, fallen like vivid rain from the trees; its rock faces were gashed with silver falls. A scented breeze blew down from that mountain and caressed them as if in welcome.

Bharata breathed, “Chitrakuta!”

A smile lit his face and Shatrughna's when they heard the Mandakini gushing downhill in the distance. They knew that in a few hours, all their torment would be redressed them: for they would see their brother Rama.

Shatrughna cried, “Send our best trackers ahead to find his asrama quickly!”

 

30. A reunion of brothers

Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana sat on the banks of the Mandakini. Sita dangled her feet in the water, while, near them and quite unafraid, a herd of deer drank from a pool in the river. The day was wearing on. They had grown used to the peace of Chitrakuta and the sorrow of exile did not weigh on their minds any more. The mountain surroundings of their little asrama were so picturesque it was impossible to be unhappy for long in that place.

But this afternoon, they heard alarmed trumpeting and heavy bodies crashing through the jungle. It was a herd of wild elephants trying to gain the higher reaches of Chitrakuta, as if they fled from some implacable enemy. Trampling down banks of bamboo, toppling small trees and crashing clumsily into bigger ones, the herd scrambled up the mountain. The great beasts splashed across the river, downstream from where the princes and Sita sat, and lumbered like a passing earthquake into the thick forest beyond.

Sita and the princes saw flocks of birds rise screaming out of the forest below them and wheel in the sky. They heard the incensed chattering of langur troops. The deer, which drank peacefully at their side, now cocked their heads and listened tensely to the cries of the other jungle folk. Calling sharply, they, too, fled up the mountain.

Rama said to Lakshmana, “Can you see what all the panic is about? I think a king must have come to hunt in the forest.”

Lakshmana shinned up a tall sala tree. When he looked east, he saw the army of Ayodhya below him. He saw the banner of Kosala, flown by Bharata's vanguard, flapping in the mountain breeze. He cried down from the tree, “Sita, hide! Rama, put out the asrama fire. Put on your armor; pick up your bow: danger is here!”

He clambered down feverishly and stood panting. Rama smiled at him and asked, “Who is coming, Lakshmana, that you are so alarmed?”

“The one who had you banished. Bharata has come with an army to make his throne secure. My astras are sad with disuse, Rama; they long to be buried in that traitor's heart. The scavengers of our jungle will feast for a year on the carcasses of his men.”

Rama said, “So now you would have me kill my brother for the throne of Ayodhya. I know you speak out of love for me; but you should not abandon your good sense. You think Bharata comes to kill us. But he has convinced our father that the kingdom belongs to me. He comes to offer me the crown and take me back to Ayodhya. Wouldn't you have done the same thing in his place? Why do you think he loves me less than you do? Do you believe Bharata would betray me for a mere kingdom? Don't doubt him like this; it hurts me.”

He paused; but anger was on him, and he said softly, “Perhaps the truth is that you want the kingdom yourself? I will tell Bharata to give it to you and to stay with me in the forest. You will see how readily he agrees. How can you be so suspicious, Lakshmana? This is our brother of whom you speak.”

For a moment Lakshmana stood stricken; then, in the manner of a child, he changed the subject. “It must be our father coming to visit us, Rama.”

Rama stood up to examine the approaching force. “Perhaps you are right. I see his favorite horses, and there is Shatrunjaya. But I cannot see the king's white parasol. Let us go back to the asrama. It is time for sandhya, and they are still an hour's climb away.”

Even as they peered down at it, the army paused under the trees. Bharata had called the halt in deference to Rama's privacy. His trackers had come back to him in excitement. They pointed to a slope above them, and a strip of level ground upon it.

“There, my lord,” said their leader. “If you look carefully you will see smoke rising into the sky. It could be the asrama of some tapasvins; but I think we have found Rama.”

Bharata ordered his commanders, “Stay here until you hear from me. Sumantra and Guha, come with us, and a few trackers.”

Shatrughna was already off up the slope and Bharata had to run to catch up with him. Guha went another way with some of his men. When he had gone a krosa, Bharata climbed a lofty sala. He saw the asrama, with the thrill of a sailor who spots land from his crow's nest.

He sent word back to Kausalya and Sumitra to follow carefully in their wake. With Guha, Shatrughna, and Sumantra, keen as anyone else to see Rama again, Bharata climbed on as quickly as he could. In the more level places, they ran up the mountain beside the cool Mandakini, until they arrived in a clearing in which there stood a cozy wooden cottage made of sala and asvakarna logs, thatched with leaves, with darbha grass spread at its door in welcome.

Through the window, Bharata saw Rama and Lakshmana's bows, inlaid with gold—Varuna's weapons—and beside them, quivers in which arrows shone like treasure. Across from the cottage was a raised platform where a fire burned. From here, the smoke they had seen rose into a clear sky. Before that fire, his eyes shut and his face tranquil, Rama sat at sandhya prayer with Sita beside him. Lakshmana stood by, with his back to Bharata's party and his arms crossed over his chest.

For a long moment, Bharata stood staring at the extraordinary sight of Rama, bare of his ornaments, wearing valkala, his hair coiled in jata, and sitting on darbha grass: at worship, like Brahma. Then his eyes swam, and with a cry, stumbling and falling on the way, he ran headlong to his brother.

“Rama!” Shatrughna also fell at Rama's feet. Rama raised them up tenderly and embraced them over and over again. Then Lakshmana was among them. Now he saw his brother before him, as he was and not as he had imagined him in his anger; and he remembered how much he loved Bharata. Rama made Bharata sit close to him, and welcomed Guha and Sumantra warmly, embracing them too.

Then he asked, “Bharata, why are you in the jungle, wearing valkala and jata? You should not have left our father alone. Tell me how he is, and how are our mothers? How is Guru Vasishta? And Sudhanva? I have thought of him often lately.”

Bharata stared at Rama, drinking in the sight of his dark face. He turned away after a moment, and said only, “It has never been the way of the Ikshvakus that a younger brother rules the kingdom while his older brother lives. Come back to orphaned Ayodhya, Rama; it languishes without a king.”

“But child, Dasaratha still rules Ayodhya. Why do you speak of a future that has not yet come to pass?”

Bharata turned his eyes to his brother in anguish, and cried, “Dasaratha no longer rules Ayodhya. Dasaratha died of a broken heart.”

Rama keeled over. Sita ran to fetch water, and Bharata and Lakshmana sprinkled it on Rama's face. But for a long time, he lay where he had fallen.

When he awoke, he sobbed helplessly. “I thought I would return to Ayodhya when fourteen years had passed, and take the dust from my father's feet. Now you tell me he is dead. And I was not there even to offer tarpana for him. Bharata, I will never come back to Ayodhya. Whose voice will I hear calling my name as Dasaratha used to, with such love? Whose arms will enfold me, as his always did?”