#kaushalya

“Forgive me, My King,” says the messenger. He bows low, shoulders bent close to his hip. He is also quivering, for who would not when given the unenviable task of speaking to the king of the dishonor of a wife so dearly loved?

Rama turns away from the man. He is a god, even unawares, his Queen divine and divine-born. What should the complaints of mortal men mean to them? And yet so it does, as it did to his father, and their fathers before him. And so Rama, well-read in Dharma and the duties of Kings, bends his godly head to the whims of a washerman.

“So be it,” he says.

By the end of the night, Ayodhya’s royal family is in tatters. The most loyal of brothers spends his night howling at the king, deeming his orders an injustice. The most virtuous of wives sees the morning sun through the eaves of the forest, and the childing mother weeps.

2.

Koushalya has never been anything less than selflessly kind – and Rama has never shied away from making use of it. So he did when Dasharatha sent her only son away, so he did when Sita left her bereft of a daughter in her old age, and so he did when he refused to go with Bharata and dashed her hopes of a loving reunion. And Koushalya, who has never sought any joy for herself, Koushalya, daughter of Kosala – the greed for which kingdom is the root of all ills – bent her head to wills of her son and her daughter and her king, and asked no more.

Perhaps that is why Rama is so surprised when she insists on him remarrying. Why does she not understand that he cannot love another woman the same way she could never love any man other than Dasharatha?

“That is not true,” his mother says. “I learned to love your father out of duty, as he did as well. So too will you.”

“That is a terrible thing to say.”

“It is not, Rama. Not every man has beheld his bride in a fragrant garden, not every woman has walked the length and breadth of Aryavarta for her exiled groom. Most of us wedded in duty, for the king and kingdom that fed us and named us daughter and queen. It makes our love and loss no less. Such is the nature of things. So I have stood beside your late father with two sister-wives, and so I have held my Kosala close and dear, and loved her as I have loved you all. And so you shall now as well, for the kingdom that names you King.”

Rama hears this long speech and hears her interspersed sighs. He is King – by virtue of his birth and his mother’s as well – and a hundred thousand men in Ayodhya alone send him tribute for it. His raiment is ever sparkling and yellow-gold, his table groans under food. All men exalt him, from the foot of the mountains to the tip of seas, more than they even do Indra, King of Gods – is his loss of love not meagre payment?

And Rama, god-king, turns away and bows. “So be it,” he says and bends his head.

By noon, a sculptor is summoned, a hundred ingots of gold collected, and a thousand golden coins offered. By the time the fires of the Ashwamedha Yajna is lit, the Queen’s empty place at Rama’s side is filled by a golden mockery of the greatest woman on Aryavart.

3.

Sita of the forest is much changed, and yet she is still the same. Before her hermit’s attire Rama and his silks appear cheap; her garlands of flowers make mockery of his gold and jewels. Even Surya, father of Ikshvaku’s Clan, bends his rays around her curves, shamed by the light in her eyes.

Come back, he wants to say, please, come back with me.

And yet Rama is King where Sita is no longer queen, and will never be unless every man in Ayodhya knows of her innocence. Lanka knew, as did Kishkinda, for Rama would not allow any tarnish upon the name of Raghu’s scions. From his own people he had sought more trust, to his own folly.

She looks at him quietly, clutching at wild children who should have known palaces, with tears in eyes that should have never seen such sorrow.

But Rama has bowed his head to the will of his people, has heard their charges and said, “So be it.”

And thus under the eaves of a forest sister to Dandaka, Sita’s chastity is questioned again. And thus, the King strikes the innocent once more, punishing where he should have shielded, being the judge where he should have been the guard, and the ransom for a Queen’s return is named.

+1.

Gentle is the land of Mithila, sweet are her songs. Wise is her sagely King, and blessed are her people. And so she has passed these virtues unto her daughter, as all good mothers do, for the land has borne Sita long before any man could lay claim upon her.

To scorn her is to scorn the loyal, the hapless and the earthbound; to forsake her is to forsake the daughter and the mother and the wife. Kosala, the kingdom that called itself Dasharatha’s for all that Koushalya was its child, has done just that – a land of raving men that seeks to destroy those who have borne and raised them.

Sita has been wife for nigh two decades, is even now a mother. And yet she is woman, and her kin are those with curved hips and gentle hands – beautiful features that would be sought and lusted after like leopards lust for calves. And as the farmer bemoans the trembling calf that strayed from the herd, so too would the world bemoan the women who fall into the jaws of men, would say: why did she not run away, why did she not fight; why did she not slay herself, that now one must doubt her husband’s might?

So, Sita lifts her head where it had been bowed, blinks tears away from her eyes.

“That cannot be,” she tells the King, for no longer is Rama husband and lover, and shakes her head.

“Mother!” she calls. Divine she is, and divine-born, and the earth, her mother, rends apart for her. Her children scream, her once-husband howls. But Sita is no longer mother and wife. It is time for her to be a daughter.

His own mother’s disappointment always cut the deepest. She was their arms-master and their taskmaster, and she was ruthless in weeding out weakness in the Ikshvaku heirs. But Kaushalya Ma’s weary sorrow wrenches Bharata’s heart like nothing else. Grieving for her husband and her sons, she is already resigned to her belief that Bharata was part of the scheming. “You wanted this kingdom, and by Kaikeyi’s cruel deed, you obtained it so quickly and smoothly.” 

She is not even angry. “I only wonder why she did not send me to the forest with Rama, there to wear deerskin and walk among thorns. Now that you have this vast kingdom, you might well do it yourself.”

She will not look at him.

Kaushalya Ma, who had sat up all night with Bharata when he was feverish, who had wiped away the dust from a thousand scraped knees with the cloth of her pallu, who had let him and Rama braid flowers they picked into her hair. Kaushalya Ma thinks of him so, and it is enough to send him onto his knees, his hands fisting in her skirts and his tongue twisting and stammering, as he tries to make her understand.

Mother -- Kaikeyi -- has rendered it thus. She who always spoke of calm and cunning and finesse in the midst of battle -- what possessed her to do such a thing, to fling aside all sense? To do this to him? No one will ever trust him again, for no fault of his own.

He thinks he could not hate her more, and anger rises up in him.

But the tide of desperation defeats the waves of rage, for the present, as he seeks to ensure that Kaushalya Ma, she who gave birth to Rama, does not brand him a schemer like the creature who bore him.

Words tumble out of him, oaths and condemnations nearly falling over one another in their haste to scramble out. Curses upon everyone and anyone who looked favorably upon the vanvass. He sounds nothing like how Father and Rama did when they spoke in court, commanding and sonorous. He does not know how to sound like a king, how to fulfill his mother’s ambition, and he is not a king now. He is a boy, bereft of his father and his brothers and his mother, and he cannot lose his stepmothers too.

She sits like a statue with her face turned away from him, but the rigid line of her profile softens, and her chin dips from its stubborn stance, and her arms, crossed and iron-limbed, guide his head to rest on her lap. Kaushalya Ma finally lowers her eyes -- Rama’s eyes -- to meet his own, and they are overbright with relief and mutual guilt. He knows his eyes must look the same. He burrows his head into the skirts of her lap, and together they weep.