The Ramayana (73 page)

Vibheeshana stood beside the kshatriya. Indrajit realized at once who had brought the vanaras to this secret place. Choking with rage, he hissed, “Traitor! You have eaten the salt of Lanka all your life and you shall be damned forever. No rakshasa child will ever say your name except as a curse. You have betrayed your brother and your nephew. How could you, coward?

“You are Rama's slave; but remember, Vibheeshana, you are dealing with the enemy. Once his use for you is over, he will not spare your life. He will kill you like the cur you are.”

Vibheeshana cried, “You are the evil spawn of an evil father. Ravana had every chance to save himself and his people. But he would not walk the way of dharma. You may be a great warrior, but you have no wisdom, only arrogance. It is true I was born a rakshasa, but I never loved violence as the rest of you do. And though he is a greater warrior than you or your father, Rama shuns violence whenever he can. He knows the way of violence is not the way of dharma.

“The wise have always said that to lust after another man's wife is madness; it is the sin that ruins a man. But Ravana has always reveled in sin, making a life of it: whether murdering rishis for his sport or reviling the Devas who are the guardians of the earth. But now the time has come to pay; neither your father nor you will escape.

“Look, Indrajit. Lakshmana guards the nyagrodha tree where your agni burns. Not you, but he. Dare you approach it, dare you tempt your death?”

For the first time in his wild and heroic life, Indrajit felt a cold pang of fear.

 

32. Indrajit and Lakshmana

Hissing like an angry cobra, Indrajit mounted his chariot.

Hanuman appeared at Lakshmana's side and lightly lifted the kshatriya onto his shoulders. The horses Brahma had given Indrajit shone like silver in the midmorning sun. The rakshasa cried, “Foolish mortal, have you forgotten how you and your brother twice lay in a swoon of death? No one can save you from me three times.”

But Lakshmana was calm, now this moment of fate was upon him. He said quietly, “Brave words and brave deeds are not the same thing. Besides, each time you came to battle, you came invisibly. Only cowards fight like that, because they are afraid of their enemy and afraid to die. Let me see your valor now that we are face to face.”

Before he had finished speaking, Indrajit shot a clutch of searing arrows at him. They covered his fair body in a blossoming of blood. With a cry, Lakshmana loosed five narachas at the rakshasa. They stung Indrajit and he roared; but they did not wound him gravely.

On they fought, the prince of Lanka and the prince of Ayodhya. Both were quick as light, both were masters of archery. Like two lions for the lordship of a jungle, they battled. Soon astras flared from their bows and lit up the hillside as if other suns had risen into the day.

Arrows stuck in each one's body and blood flowed richly from their wounds. They fought on, unmindful, upon the edge of death. The forest was hushed at the sound of their bowstrings, and all the rakshasas, vanaras, and reekshas around them grew still, as if they realized how pointless their lesser contentions were. They stood gazing at the mythic duel. And it seemed primeval phalanxes fought from the two princes' bodies: timeless legions of darkness and light.

A hum of subtle shafts from Lakshmana's magic quiver clipped the joints of Indrajit's armor. Like a snake's skin, the light silver mail fell away from the demon prince's body. Crouching bared, Indrajit shot twenty arrows in a blur, not only at Lakshmana but now at Vibheeshana as well. Taken unawares, Vibheeshana was struck down; he bore no arms against his nephew. But he recovered quickly and plucked the barbs from him. Yet his cry of pain distracted Lakshmana for a moment. In a flash, Indrajit shot his armor away also, and he was as unprotected as his adversary.

By now Vibheeshana had joined the fray. He killed a hundred rakshasas, but not an arrow did he shoot at his brother's son. Blind and deaf to everything around them save each other and their missiles, Lakshmana and Indrajit fought on. War was their art; they were masters, absorbed in their arcane craft. Both were so far above any other warrior there that only the princes themselves, one of grace and the other of evil, fathomed the dimensions of their duel. This was a trial of superior wills: a contention of two great spirits, to the death of one.

The wind did not stir when Indrajit and Lakshmana dueled at Nikumbhila; the birds and beasts of the forest were hushed. Slowly an unnatural twilight fell on that place, because the very sky was veiled with arrows. They loosed their shafts with the swiftness of inspiration, and both warriors were hardly visible for this speed. Indrajit fought from the air and the ground; and when he flew up, Hanuman rose with him. Finally the demon saw that fighting from the sky was no advantage to him: the son of the wind was quicker through the air than his magic horses.

Not merely that forest or island, but all the earth held its breath when these princes fought. In the deepest jungles and on the most exalted, faraway mountains, fires of sacrifice flickered and died down, when Indrajit and Lakshmana dueled on Lanka.

Then, as if with strength and will he had saved for this moment, Lakshmana struck Indrajit's horses with eight scorching arrows; so they whinnied in agony and blood spurted from their flanks. As those fine steeds faltered for a moment, Lakshmana killed Indrajit's charioteer with another shaft through his heart. With a curse, Indrajit leaped onto the chariot head. Thrusting his dead sarathy out of the way, he seized the fallen reins and drove the silver horses himself, while in the same hand that gripped the reins he held his bow and covered Lakshmana with fire.

But now Ravana's son's prowess was constrained, and the vanaras jumped onto his horses' backs. Indrajit could not hold them off while he fought Lakshmana and drove the chariot at once. With fangs, nails, mighty sinews, and rocks, the monkeys killed Indrajit's horses.

Night fell on the jungle. No one saw where Indrajit melted into it and vanished back to the city of Lanka. Lakshmana killed a thousand rakshasas, while his eyes always sought their prince. His ire was risen now; Indrajit and he had battled at the ends of their genius. It was a tide in him, the spirit of that elegant and mortal duel, and Lakshmana could hardly contain it.

Fortunately for his rakshasas, Indrajit traveled on a wizard's feet to Lanka. He did not tarry there for even a moment; no one saw him come or go. He mounted another chariot, fleet as the one the monkeys had destroyed. It was yoked to horses as marvelous as those that had died: Brahma had given him a whole stable of them.

Like Yama's wrath, the rakshasa flew back into battle. In fury at what they had done to his horses, he fell wildly on the monkeys. He killed countless vanaras before Lakshmana stood before him again and drew his fire. Fortune smiled on Lakshmana for an instant, and he broke Indrajit's bow in his hands.

But quick as fear, Indrajit picked up another bow and loosed a sizzle of arrows at Vibheeshana and Hanuman. Having exhausted the lesser astras, having gauged each other, the two archers now summoned more powerful weapons. Indrajit invoked a pale shaft of death, a yamastra, and shot it at Lakshmana. But Lakshmana cut it down with an artful weapon of the mountain yakshas: great Kubera's astra. Joined in momentous flames, the two ayudhas plunged into the sea, to be extinguished in the deep, after hours.

Lakshmana invoked the varunastra, of cold and watery death. But Indrajit met it with a fiery raudra; screaming in the sky, the two put each other out and fell in gray ashes to the earth. Lakshmana loosed the agneyastra of a thousand flames, but his enemy's calid suryastra erupted against it. Fire consumed fire on high, and both subsided.

Indrajit fitted an asurastra to his bowstring, a demoniacal weapon and close to his heart; it was the astra of his race. But Lakshmana met it with a mahesvarastra, as it came keening at him, and smashed it into shards of darkness. It was each other's knowledge, as much as each other's strength and quickness, that the two warriors plumbed: their gyana of the devastras. For every suryastra would not put out every agneyastra; nor would all mahesvarastras cut down any asurastra. Myriad were the astras and infinite their variety. Only the greatest archers, who had been instructed in their lore by the most knowing gurus, could match one another missile for missile as Lakshmana and Indrajit did. Only those blessed by the guardians of the occult weapons could survive a duel like this one for as long as these princes did.

Unseen, in the ethereal akasa, the fifth element, the rishis and the pitrs gathered in the sky and poured down their blessings in subtle waves over Lakshmana, who fought like a lion below them. He heard a voice in his heart, whispering urgently to him, “The moment of his death has come. Summon the astra of the king of the Devas; kill him with Indra's weapon.”

Lakshmana invoked the aindrastra, relucent ayudha. He whispered a fierce prayer: “If it is true Rama has never strayed from dharma, let this arrow have Indrajit's life in my brother's name.”

Clearing the darkness, lighting the faces of the ancestors and the sages with unearthly luster, the astra flared from Lakshmana's bow. And Indrajit had no answer to it. It took his lean head from his neck in a scarlet flash and his scream echoed through the shocked forest. When the light of the astra faded, the severed head lay on the red earth of Lanka like a golden lotus sprouted from the soil.

The vanaras' triumphant roaring shook Ravana's palace and fell on Rama's ears across the mountain. Like the sun fallen to the earth, Indrajit's head lay glowing in death: a star burned down. His pale body lay apart, like the moon cursed by Daksha to wane forever. Wailing, the rakshasas fled back to Ravana on his lonely throne, to tell him his last hope had been dashed.

Once Mandodari's brilliant son had brought Indra himself, bound in hoops of fire, to Lanka. He had paraded the Lord of the Devas through the streets of his father's city. Today Indrajit lay dead, his head plucked from his body by Indra's astra.

 

33. The hero

Lakshmana stood drenched in blood; his bowstring still quivered from discharging the aindrastra that killed Indrajit. Petal rain fell out of the sky, as if the Devas had crushed a rainbow and showered the pieces down on the kshatriya. This was the most critical victory yet. Indrajit had been the key to this war, the only rakshasa who had seemed invincible.

Joy coursed through heaven and earth. But Ravana was not yet dead. Glowing with his achievement, Lakshmana came before Rama. When Vibheeshana told him Indrajit was dead, Rama jumped up and cried to his brother, “Now are you a man!”

Rama clasped Lakshmana to him and kissed him repeatedly. He said, “This is the greatest triumph of our war. As long as Indrajit lived, victory was just a dream. Now it is within reach.”

Then, his eyes filling to see Lakshmana's wounds, Rama began to clean them himself, like a mother. Though Lakshmana blushed brightly, Rama would not let him move. “What you have done will break Ravana's heart. Indrajit was his last hope; now Ravana is as good as dead.”

When Lakshmana told him what Hanuman and Vibheeshana had done, Rama hugged them also. He said, “It won't be long now. Ravana will come to fight me.”

Sushena arrived there. Rama handed Lakshmana over to his care, for the younger prince was in pain. Hanuman and Vibheeshana were wounded as well, and some vanaras and reekshas. Patiently and gently, Sushena went to work on them all. Soon their pain was eased and their wound mouths were closed by his attentions. In those days, the healing herbs of the earth were truly effective; it is only in the kali yuga they have lost so much of their potency.

Shaft by shaft, the duel between Lakshmana and Indrajit was described to an avid Rama. Indrajit's courage and skill were praised, and the fact that he never used maya while he fought. Man to man they had battled; the better warrior prevailed and the one whose death was written was vanquished. Vibheeshana, who knew Rama worried about Lakshmana's quick temper, said how calm Lakshmana had been on this, the great occasion. And that was what had given him victory; because Indrajit had fought with anger.

Not once or twice but ten times Rama made them repeat each detail of the battle, as this was indeed music to his ears. A hundred times he hugged Lakshmana, making him blush, in embarrassment and joy.

 

34. Wrath

Ravana's ministers did not know how to break the news to their king. When they stood wordlessly before him, he fixed them in a glare and said, “Speak! What have you come to say?”

“Lord, Indrajit fought Rama's brother at Nikumbhila. He made the human's body a home for his arrows. Lakshmana was covered in his own blood.”

“Your son fought Hanuman and Vibheeshana.”

A slow smile appeared on Ravana's face. “How did Lakshmana die?”

But the ministers made no reply. Ravana cried, “Did Rama's brother escape with his life, that you stand so silent? Tell me!”

They said in a whisper, “The duel was fierce and even, Lord. But at last, Lakshmana killed your son. Indrajit has been gathered to his fathers.”

For a moment was there such silence in that court you could hear the heartbeats of those who stood in it. Then a long wail burst from Ravana. Again and again he howled his son's name, as if to call him back from the dead; until compassionate nature intervened and Ravana slumped from his throne in a faint. They let him lie for a while before they dared to fetch water and sprinkle his face with it. Crying his son's name, the Rakshasa awoke from oblivion into a nightmare, the ruin that was his life.

“Indrajit, my little child! You have died before me. I thought you were invincible, or I would never have sent you into battle. You brought Indra bound with your serpent fire and marched him through our streets. And now a mere man has killed you? How could I have foreseen this, even in my dreams?”

Ravana groaned; his glorious life had become a living hell. Just one sin had brought him to this pass, one terrible error of judgment. Or perhaps it was the weight of all his other sins, his dark and arrogant past, that had finally pulled him down. In his time he had truly borrowed more from life than he could afford to pay back.