Rama and Sita entered a wonderful maze of lit streets, and when Bharatha caught sight of them as he ran down the steps of the palace, the whole city was chiming with celebration with this festival of lights.
A fascinating excerpt from Vayu Naidu's book, The Living Legend.
A children's Ramlila. Photograph: Kind courtesy Sandeep Handa/Pixabay
When they were alone, Rama could not stop his flood of words. Sita watched him and listened.
All his emptiness when she had left, the constant battle to find her, the alliances with Sugriva and Hanuman and the sense of being forsaken by the very gods he worshipped had become a hard rock within him.
By telling Sita about that time, the memory that shaped his thoughts chipped, crumbled and flowed like soft soil with the swiftness of words.
Sita threaded it into a garland of stories that she would tell someone in another time in her life.
After a long while, he stopped talking. Only then he looked at Sita and said, 'And you?'
She rose steadily from where she was sitting on the ground in the ruins of what might have once been a merchant's home.
Walking up to him, she took his face in both her hands and made him look at her, into her eyes, and beyond her.
Her love was too much to bear. He closed his eyes and the tears of longing and understanding flowed.
She pressed her lips on his closed lids and then said, 'Tell me, Rama, what's in a name?'
He could feel in his heart the truth of her waiting with no other thought or feeling, but for him.
Rama was his name, but she loved the quality within him when they first set eyes on each other.
His strength to love the truth. That was the light she worshipped in him as a man, as her husband.
That was Rama, and she reminded him of his true self.
Thirteen long years had passed since their exile had begun.
Thirteen dark months had passed from the time Sita was abducted.
Neither of them knew of the dark spell that had been cast by Ravana stealing the pot of milk and blood from the holy man or Mandodari's drinking it.
But it had set off a chain of dark, unrevealed mysteries of human nature that cast its interminable shadow on Rama and Sita's lives.
The moon was also in its dark cycle. Slowly, through the smoke and the mist and waking tiredness of the city that had been ravaged by war for fourteen days, Rama and Sita felt their companionship returning.
Their bodies entwined against the ruins and dissolved into the arch of eternal lovers.
In the brazen light of day, all damages were accounted for and by Vibhishana's instruction, a mass cremation was held.
He reformed the council and with the swift skills of rakshasa town planning, the city and kingdom of Lanka was to be a glittering jewel by the sea.
Rama recommended that Vibhishana be installed on the throne, and so, preparations began in fervour. Everyone wanted a celebration -- monkeys, bears, rakshasas alike.
Rama, Sita and Lakshmana were central to the rituals performed on the day of Vibhishana's coronation.
Even the rakshasas admitted there was a rhythm to life that they had not known before.
Just when Rama, Sita and Lakshmana were sitting watching the jubilant crowds from their apartment, Hanuman came with an urgent message.
'It's from Prince Bharatha.'
Rama read out aloud from the palm leaf: 'The end of the fourteenth year fast approaches with the next new moon.
'I have obeyed your instruction to rule the kingdom during your exile.
'I have done it in your name.
'If you do not return to rule this kingdom that has always been your right, I will build a funeral pyre that I will light and step into.'
'We must hurry, otherwise, he will do it,' Rama said, and all three of them leapt up.
It was a long way from Lanka. If they returned to the route Rama's armies came from India, it would take another season and that would be too late.
In any case, they hadn't much to carry as they had no possessions. But when the time came to bid farewell to Vibhishana, he piled them with gifts and ships to carry across to Ayodhya.
To save time on their return journey, he escorted Rama, Sita and Lakshmana with Hanuman, in his aerial chariot across the ocean.
When they landed on the shores of India, Rama and Sita decided they would like to walk into Ayodhya, just the way they had left all those many years ago.
It was night by the time they reached the outskirts of Ayodhya. The new moon was hidden behind the clouds.
In the dwellings of the animal catchers and tamers, one woman looked out and said: 'Fourteen years have passed. My child was born when Rama, Sita and Lakshmana left Ayodhya.
'Now their exile is over, they promised to return. But how dark it is, how will they find their way?
'Hmm... let me see. I have enough oil saved for one lamp.
'If I light it and keep it outside our hut, at least they will know they have reached this bank of the Sarayu.'
So, poor as she was, she drained what little oil she had saved for her dry hair, fashioned a wick out of cotton and dipped it in oil.
She lit the lamp and kept it outside her hut as she went in.
Another woman was standing out on the balcony of her house and thought 'Hmm... fourteen years of exile have passed.
'I hope Rama has not forgotten his promise to us to bring Sita back safely.
'Goodness! How dark it is. They must have travelled miles... not even one lamp, as if we are all in mourning.'
Then she caught sight of one solitary flame at the outskirts of Ayodhya.
'Some poor soul has thought the same. If all they can afford is one lamp, then let me lay out at least twenty lamps.'
So her servants were summoned and oil was poured into larger lamps, and they decided to multiply the lamp count with their own, and on and on it went as the murmur went around Ayodhya until the entire city was like a night sky full of stars.
Rama and Sita entered a wonderful maze of lit streets, and when Bharatha caught sight of them as he ran down the steps of the palace, the whole city was chiming with celebration with this festival of lights.
After the passing of fourteen years, Rama and Sita were installed at the coronation as king and queen of Ayodhya.
Hanuman continued to live in Ayodhya as did Lakshmana, to serve Rama as faithful aides.
When storytellers sang of all those years, they always looked towards Valmiki, who inspired them about how the light of human hope saved the world.
Finally, the only choice left to us is a path that has great moments of cacophonous dark out of which we make harmonies and light.
Excerpted from The Living Legend by Vayu Naidu, with the kind permission from the publishers Penguin Random House India.
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com
