The Ramayana (74 page)

The last few days had turned Ravana's hair pure white. Softly he said, “My son, to die in battle is the best kind of death. It is better than dying of old age in your bed, helpless and dependent on someone for every breath you draw. Those who die as heroic a death as you did find heaven for themselves. You died fighting for your father, and you will have an exalted place in Swarga.”

Ravana smiled bitterly. “Today all the Devas, the Danavas and Daityas, the gandharvas, charanas, kinnaras, and kimpurushas rejoice: because Indrajit, whom none of them could face in battle, is dead. Devaloka celebrates this day; Indra's cup of joy brims over. Ah, Meghanada, my cloud child, it seems just yesterday that you were a baby and I cradled you in my arms. I feel this earth is an empty dream now that you are dead, and the only truth is the anguish in my heart. My son, my sweet son, how will I live without you?”

He wept like a child himself. “How will I tell your mother you are dead? Will you be loved better in any heaven, that you have chosen to leave us and Lanka, whose very life you were? Weren't you meant to offer tarpana for me, when I died? To set the first flame to my pyre? But you have changed all that. You have made me the son by dying before me. Oh my precious child, forgive me. I never thought my sin was so heinous that I would have to face this grief.”

Ravana wept as if it were as natural as breathing to him now. He spoke in a low voice, to himself, though he did not care any more who heard him. “No, not even she is worth this. But I could not help myself, once I had seen her face. No, Indrajit, it is not a warrior's arrows, but a woman's beauty that killed you. As she is the most beautiful woman on earth, she is also the most dangerous. She is Lanka's nemesis.”

He sat sunk in his throne, hovering between grief and madness. But then his innate courage returned to him, and anger. The eyes flashed. Nine sinister heads glowered in their cluster around his central face. There was wrath in those eyes that death itself would not put out. His ministers shrank from their king; his breath blazed even like Vritrasura's of old.

Ravana whispered, “She has brought me nothing but pain and misfortune. And for what? She did not return my love. She came into Lanka like a curse. For her sake, I have lost my brothers and my sons, my nephews, Prahastha, and a million devoted rakshasas. They have all died for her, and she does not care even to look into my face.”

His chest heaved with feelings too powerful to think about or even contain. Ravana said, “She must die.” He shouted it aloud, until the palace rang with his roaring. “She must die! She must die! Sita must die!”

The nine fiendish heads bobbed up and down, chanting, “She must die! We told you she must die!”

His ministers had never heard those heads speak before. They shivered to listen to their loathsome chatter. Molten tears ran down all Ravana's faces. He drew his sword, blue and glinting. Without another word, his main face set in a mask, he strode out from his sabha. Down the lofty corridors of his palace went Ravana, heading for the asokavana. His steps rang along those passages, and his women and ministers followed him fearfully. Though they had seen his rage through the years, on and off the field of battle, never before had they seen their king like this. He was entirely demonic, a Spirit of darkness. No one dared try to stop him.

His sword a streak of lightning in his hand, Ravana stalked toward Sita to kill her. It was as if his great love had turned into the darkest hatred. His ministers and some of his wives began to speak to the Rakshasa, to beg him, all together, not to commit the crime he seemed bent upon. Sita saw Ravana striding toward her; she sensed his wrath across the asokavana. She saw the naked blade in his hand and knew her death was coming.

Her life lurched in her, a thing of perfect fear. She thought, desperately, that he came to kill her because she spurned him. She thought Rama was dead. She wished she had allowed Hanuman to carry her out of Lanka. All this in the space of a moment.

Ravana was deaf to the pleas of his women and his ministers. Grimly, he strode toward Sita. When he was halfway across the asokavana, she saw another figure dart out from a side door of the palace and run toward the Demon. She did not know him, but this was Suparshva, one of the last of Ravana's trusted ministers left alive.

Suparshva clutched his king's arm and cried with no thought for his own life, “My lord, what are you doing? Have you lost your mind, that you even think of killing a woman?”

Ravana stopped, and for a moment it seemed Suparshva's death had come. His king turned on him, snarling, and raised his sword. But as if he was compelled by fate herself, that rakshasa cried, “What use is it turning your wrath on a helpless woman, and one you love besides? The war is not lost and the greatest warrior is on our side: you, my lord. Don't give in to despair. When have you ever lost a battle? Turn this rage on Rama and victory shall still be yours.”

Suparshva saw he had his king's attention. Ravana growled horribly, but he lowered his sword. He blinked his eyes and the cluster of nine heads vanished from sight, as if he had mastered them once more, and himself. Waking from madness, the Rakshasa shook his head to clear it and grew attentive. He seemed to see the world around him again; he seemed to hear what Suparshva said. More, he seemed to doubt his own anger and to realize the sense of what his minister was saying.

Frantic to convince his king, that rakshasa went on, “My lord, today is the fourteenth day after the full moon. Tomorrow is amavasya, the night of the new moon. Fight Rama tomorrow, and you will surely kill him.”

Hope sparked alive again in Ravana's eyes and clutched at his wretched heart. From across the asokavana he saw Sita's face, and it shone like a bit of a higher world fallen into this one. Seeing that face, Ravana knew he would not have been able to kill her, anyway, when he was actually faced with the moment. He still loved her more than anything else: his son's lives, his brother's, his people's, his own.

Suparshva saw the yearning in his king's face and said gently, “My lord, when Rama is dead she will be yours.”

 

35. Moolabala

With a last, lingering look at the woman who had ruined him, Ravana thrust his sword back into its sheath and stalked back into his palace. In the little temple, Sita sobbed in relief. She had a clear sense of being saved, yet again, by forces beyond the ken of reason. Without knowing who he was, Sita blessed Suparshva with all her heart.

In his sabha, Ravana paced the white marble floor, from bay window to bay window, from the tall doors to his throne, feverishly. Often he had to wipe his eyes: the tears for Indrajit had not stopped flowing. Yet the enemy was at his gate, and he must face him. At last he stopped his pacing. He went to his throne and sat in it, and a great decisiveness came over the Rakshasa. After he turned back from the asokavana, he had not spoken a word to anyone. His ministers and commanders stood by, waiting for his command.

Ravana rose again. He went to the rakshasas who were the leaders of his moolabala. This elite guard was the root of his power; these were his best warriors. He said, “Take horses, chariots, elephants, and foot soldiers. The human has killed my son; I want his life.”

Every rakshasa in Ravana's moolabala was a great warrior, and there were a hundred thousand of them. This was the force Ravana had saved until the end of the war; none of these demons had yet gone to fight. They were all masters of astras, and had been taught by Ravana himself. The moolabala was the scourge of the worlds, the bane of the Devas. Now the Rakshasa unleashed it on Rama and the vanaras.

Bristling with occult weapons, Ravana's crack legion went to war. The rocks and trees the vanaras hurled made no impression on that force. They smashed those weapons of earth and jungle with riptides of astras. These rakshasas were unlike any others the vanaras had faced before: they fought like one man. As the monkeys perished, in hundreds every moment, it seemed an army of Indrajits had come to slaughter them.

The vanaras fled to Rama, crying they could not face the moolabala. Already, twenty thousand monkeys' corpses lay strewn across the field and not a single rakshasa had fallen. Without a word, Rama stood up, dark and tremendous. He raised his bow, and next moment the prince of Ayodhya was a blur before his vanaras' eyes.

Rama's archery against Ravana's moolabala was like Siva's tandava. He was a cloud, and his arrows were the livid rain that lashed the rakshasa legion. He was a sun and his shafts were beams that lit the darkness of the moolabala with iridescent death. In no time, twenty thousand rakshasas lay beside the vanaras they had slain. Rama's archery was unfathomable; it was transcendent, not of time but of infinity. And of Rama himself, while he waged immaculate war, there was no physical sign save his bow. Bent in a circle of flames, the Kodanda seemed to hang on air. No visible hand wielded it, but it consumed the moolabala in its firestorm.

Even as we, the deluded in this world of samsara, do not see the living Jivatma in ourselves, so too vanara and rakshasa no longer saw Rama. But the death he brought was everywhere. Elephants fell, horses and chariots were shattered, and, most of all, rakshasas fell, thousands of Ravana's best warriors, to astras that hung fire in the sky, and fell on them with erupting hearts of flame, each one made of a thousand deadly shafts. Not an arrow fell tamely; every one claimed a demon's life.

Time seemed to stand still, awestruck. The blue prince raised the battle into another, supernal dimension. The rakshasas cried that he was invisible, so they could not shoot back at him. Rama loosed a subtle gandharvastra at the moolabala and it came upon them like a fragrant breath of spring. But it was full of hallucinations and it mastered their minds. Suddenly those rakshasas saw a thousand Ramas. They saw him everywhere, smiling, his radiant bow calling them to death, which they knew was such a tender ceremony at his hands. Then again, they did not see him, but only the luster of his arrows: a single, ubiquitous light, engulfing them. They no longer knew or cared when they died; the rakshasas sighed, and were all at strange peace. Many even died with Rama's sweet name on their lips.

In just a muhurta, all that legion was razed. Just a handful, at the very rear of the moolabala, fled back to their master in his palace. It was a repetition of Panchavati. But the force of rakshasas this time was much greater, and they were not merely forest demons who tormented rishis of the vana; these were Ravana's finest troops, handpicked and trained by the king.

In a short hour, the invincible moolabala was annihilated. The widows of the dead streamed into the streets of Lanka, and their lament filled the city.

Some cried, “All this is Surpanaka's fault; she began this war.”

And others, “Ravana should have been warned when Khara was killed, and the fourteen thousand at Janasthana.”

“But he was smitten blind with the human woman.”

“He does not care who is sacrificed. Ravana doesn't love his people any more, only Sita.”

“Kumbhakarna, Atikaya, and Indrajit died. Still he sent our men to their deaths.”

Once the streets of Lanka were full of vina nadam, soft flute notes, women's voices singing, the tinkling little bells and anklets, and the moans and sighs of rakshasis at love: all of which Hanuman heard when he first came. Now the same streets were riven with screaming and wailing, the gnashing of teeth and bitter accusations. There was not a house in that city which had not lost a son, a father, a brother, or a husband, slain for the sake of what the women saw as their king's madness.

The handful of his moolabala that escaped Rama came, shocked and bloody, before their sovereign. Ravana sat coiled, hissing like a king cobra on his throne. He bit his lip and trembled; deep lines of anguish were etched on his ashen face. He had not dreamed his finest legion could vanish as it had, like snow in a desert. Now his body glowed with the fury in him, like the pralaya.

He had already learned of the rout when the remnant of the hundred thousand returned to him. He did not look at them, but whispered, “Let Mahaparshava, Virupaksha, and Mahodara come to me.”

When these rakshasas came, Ravana had controlled himself. He said to them softly, but with intense purpose, “I am going to war. I will cover the sun and the moon, the sky and the earth with arrows. Let those who will, that remain alive, come with me. I do not command it; I, Ravana, ask it. I am going to avenge Kumbhakarna and Prahastha, Atikaya and Indrajit. With my own hands, I will wipe the tears of every woman in Lanka who weeps. I will avenge every rakshasa who has died for me. Tell them. Not a vanara shall live, not Rama or his brother, not Vibheeshana, Hanuman, or Sugriva, or any of the others. Those of you who will march gladly with me, come!”

He strapped on his armor, light as mist. He strode out from his sabha and into the sun, where his chariot waited for him, with piles of bows and arrows laid in it. Not a living rakshasa stayed behind in Lanka when Ravana went to battle. Every demon accompanied his king; even the wounded went back to fight. For long ages he had brought them glory, and they would share death with him before they betrayed his trust.

As soon as he came out into the sun, his anxiety and sorrow fell away like shreds of night. This was the hour of reckoning, and the Rakshasa was a great warrior. He did not fear battle; he loved it. Only the waiting had been unendurable.

Awesome Ravana stood up tall in his ratha, to wave to his last army. In one voice his rakshasas roared his name.

“Jaya!”
they thundered.
“Jaya, Ravana!”

 

36. An infernal shakti

Ravana went to war like a fire sweeping the earth. Around him were Mahodara, Mahaparshva, and Virupaksha. In waves around their chariots swelled the rakshasa army, a million demons. Like the God of Death came Ravana. But as soon as he emerged from his palace, darkness filled the sky; it seemed the sun had been plucked out of the day.