SITA’S SISTER (42 page)

Their bedchamber was like the one on their wedding night. The soft warmth of the scented oil lamps basked it with an alluring glow. Shanta and Sumitra had strewn the pillows and the silk sheets with rose petals, making a soft flower bed, fragile and fragant. But Urmila barely glanced at it, her eyes were riveted on the man in her room. He was here after years of lonesome days.

Lakshman turned around to look at Urmila. She did not eagerly rush to him and fling her arms around him to passionately kiss him as she had so many nights ago, after their wedding. She stood there still, watching him, her eyes aged, weary. He would do anything to reinfuse the mischievous sparkle back in them. He felt a rush of emotions. She looked different; she seemed different. It was her face which now dominated her personality; it shone from a serene loveliness, the wide, large eyes having lost the twinkling vivacity. She was quiet and contemplative, a small smile hovering around her lips, making her look all the more forlon.

‘Did you get to talk to your mother?’ she asked falteringly.

He nodded. She was unusually quiet, desperate to talk with him, yet finding herself tongue-tied. She had never been inarticulately shy with him. But seeing him again—leaner, thinner, darker—in such close physical proximity, in the privacy of their chamber, made her suddenly feel awkward. His mere presence in the room overpowered her; the long, frozen years refused to melt away. She was disconcertingly assailed with a fit of nervousness, faintly unsure of herself and flooded with self-doubt. She frantically groped for words to say something: she had so much to tell him, so much she wanted to know yet her churning mental chatter remained unspoken.

‘You have been crying,’ he said gently, his sharp eyes taking in the slightly swollen red eyes. He took her trembling hands in his. She felt a dart of sharp pleasure. She felt pleasantly warm, the heat spreading and fanning her face: she had not experienced his touch for so long.

‘Never remind a woman she has been crying!’ she retorted, wishing she had washed her face more thoroughly to cleanse it of any traces of tears. She had not wanted him to know she had been weeping.

‘I know you hate tears and you hate it more being discovered with them and I am not talking of your temper tears of the tantrum variety,’ he laughed softly, rubbing his thumb on the soft skin of her unexposed wrist.

Mingled with the erotic frisson of pleasure was a new sensation. His fingers were scratchy and rough. She took his hands in hers and turned them palm outwards. They were badly calloused, the pink skin now bleached, tough and hardened. These were the hands that had chopped wood, fetched water from the river, strung arrows to kill animals and demons. These were the hands that had shown no mercy while killing Indrajit and more. These were the hands which had collected wood to kindle the fire for Sita’s agnipariksha, these were the hands that had begged her to let him stay back to guard her till Ram returned. These must be the hands which must have clenched in mute pain as Sita had hurled those insults. And these were the hands to draw the mystic line to protect her in his absence. Urmila saw in a quick flash, the entire fourteen years in the deep, webbed lines of his blistered palms.

Her vision suddenly blurred and she blinked her eyes hard. Drawing his hands close to her and resting her head on his chest, her face turned away so he could not see the gathering tears. She did not want to mar this moment with any more sad thoughts. As he gathered her in his arms, sculpting her against his hard frame, allowing her to regain her composure, she relaxed slowly against him. They remained wrapped in each other’s arms, he holding her close and she hearing the steady beat of his heart against her, both washed by a long wave of pleasure and peaceful fulfilment. She could not believe she was holding him at last, that she could feel him, touch him, breathe him in. She clung to him closer to reassure herself and felt his arms tighten around her as if to never let her go. He swiftly unpinned her hairpin and let her hair fall loose, burying his face in its silken fragrance. She turned her head slightly to inspect the wound on his chest. It still looked fresh and raw against all the scars on his chest. She ran her fingers lightly over each of them, wondering about the history of each. Gently laying her lips on it, she caressed it softly, hoping to drain the pain away.

‘You must be exhausted,’ she murmured as she edged him towards the bed. It looked large, soft and welcoming. She sat down waiting for him. He stretched down on the bed and gave a long sigh. He looked at her long and languidly, and then he held out his arms for her. He was still holding her in his arms, sometime later, when he fell asleep through the longest, peaceful stretch of a starless night lit up with fireworks still bursting outside the palace.

The early morning rays flooded his sleeping face, the thick lashes flying open immediately, his eyes alert. She looked up at him, her eyes smiling, ‘Now will you tell me how was that my sister got kidnapped in spite of you being there?’

And Lakshman settled down to tell her the whole story.

Urmila and Lakshman had two sons—Angad and Chitraketu—almost a year after a pregnant Sita was banished by Ram into the forest, a few months after their return to Ayodhya. Urmila remained Ram’s most outspoken critic and could not bring herself to forgive him for choosing his people and his country over his wife—Sita, her sister. It was Lakshman who was entrusted with the task of abandoning Sita in the forest—a deed for which he derided himself all his life, his guilt-ridden self-flagellation as impotent as Urmila’s anguished fury. Things were never the same after that…

Lakshman died as he had lived—for Ram. Ironically, for one who had obeyed his elder brother all his life, Lakshman died for disobeying Ram. Having acted against a royal decree, his brother’s orders, Lakshman too had to bow down before the laws of the land.

Decades after a distraught Sita had descended into the bosom of bhoomi devi, her mother earth, Lord Yama decided to pay King Ram a strange visit. While he was in a closed-door conversation with Ram, Rishi Durvasa too sought an audience with the King of Kosala. Lakshman asked him to wait as Ram was not to be disturbed. Enraged, Sage Durvasa threatened to destroy Ayodhya, forcing Lakshman to disobey the royal command and suffer the death penalty of intruding into the room when the king was in private conversation with some one else. Fully realizing the fatal eventuality, Lakshman forced the door open, choosing to die rather than watching his city being destroyed. And as per the laws of the land, which even Ram could not alter, Lakshman accepted the death order and beheaded himself with his own sword.

Unable to bear the grief of losing his dear brother, Ram decided to relinquish the throne to his twin sons, Luv and Kush, and give up his life through jal samadhi, by walking deep into River Sarayu. The remaining two brothers followed him into the river, as the people of Ayodhya stood horrified and repentant, wondering if they had deserved such a king and their long-gone queen.

The kingdom was judiciously divided between the young princes. Luv and Kush were crowned the kings of North and South Kaushal Pradesh in Ayodhya. Bharat’s sons, Taksha and Pushkal, ruled Gandhara with Takshashila as the capital. Shatrughna gave his kingdom of Mathura and Vidisha to his two sons, Subahu and Shatrughati. Lakshman’s sons, Angad and Chitraketu, ruled over the kingdom of Karupadhadesha, a Himalayan kingdom near Mithila—the land of their mother Urmila.

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I come from a family of three sisters, and am fortunate to be a mother of two daughters and an aunt of three nieces, besides having four aunts myself. And thriving amidst such feminine obviousness, I often wondered how it might have been with Sita and her sisters. It is for and because of all these lovely ladies in my life that I have written this book; and of course, Aai, my doughty mother, who brought up three distinctly dissimilar daughters so beautifully. Possibly, because she had two sisters as well! I am indebted to all these interesting host of women in my family.

Talking of such wondrous women-bonding, I could not have gone much ahead with this book had it not been for the constant verbal editing and proofing, debates, doubts and discussions with friends—Priya and Sarika, who were impatient enough to comb through the book, whilst still a draft, twice. Priya’s constructive comments and arguments extended to the title of the book as well.

Many thanks to Niloufer, another good friend, who, being an illustrator-artist, was indulgent enough to come up with a fetching cover design, something far more creative than what I had in mind. Urmila could not have looked more pensive and wistful…

Thanks again to my niece, Maithili, for making a short trailer of this book. I say
again
, since her debut attempt at film-making, previously with
Karna’s Wife,
was pretty much a success, it prompted her to dare another.

More thanks extended to the Rupa team and to Kadambari for editing this book. A special thanks to my editor, Ritu Vajpeyi-Mohan, for shepherding the publishing of this book so wonderfully.

The only study on Urmila that I could gather were a few scarce, random articles and a treasure of interesting quips, once recounted to me by my grandmother.

And lastly, had it not been for His blessings and the good will of those well-wishers, I would not have been able to write or complete this book.

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