The Grove of Ashoka Trees

Draupadi had been in the camp again for some weeks. Jayadratha had been caught and shaved and let go, and the brothers had stopped talking about it, and she had gone back to grinding the day's grain as though nothing had been done to her at all. Yudhishthira watched her do it and could not put the thing down.

"You said Rama suffered," he said to Markandeya. "You said he got her back. Tell me about her. Not about the bridge and not about the arrows. What was done to her in that house, and what did she do, all those months, with nobody to help her?"

"You are asking because of your own wife," said the sage.

"I am asking because of my own wife."

"Then listen," said Markandeya, "and understand first that Sita was carried off out of a hermitage in the woods, exactly as Krishna of Panchala was carried out of your camp, by a man who thought that a woman in the forest was a thing lying loose in the world. And understand second that Sita was alone for the whole of it. Your wife had five husbands and a shaved king delivered to her feet within a day. Sita had a grove of trees and one kind rakshasi, and she held out for a year on that."

Ravana, excited by lust, having reached his city of Lanka, did not put Sita in a cell. That is the first thing to understand about him. He placed her in an abode resembling Nandana itself, within a forest of Asoka trees, a garden so quiet and so green that it looked like the asylum of ascetics rather than the pleasure ground of a king of Rakshasas.

He gave her a beautiful place because he intended to be chosen. A cell would have been an admission that he had taken her by force, and the thing he wanted from her could not be taken by force at all, and somewhere under his ten heads he knew it.

So the large-eyed princess of Videha passed her days there in distress, in the loveliest garden in the southern world. She lived on fruits and roots. She practised ascetic austerities with fasts. She put off the ornaments of a queen and attired herself in ascetic garb, the bark and the single cloth of a woman who has renounced the world, and she waned thin, day by day, thinking of her absent lord.

She made herself, in the middle of Ravana's garden, into precisely the thing that no garden is built for. He had furnished the place for a bride. She turned it into a hermitage, and sat down in it, and got thinner.

The king of the Rakshasas appointed many Rakshasa women to guard her, and armed them: bearded darts and swords and lances and battle-axes and maces, and flaming brands to carry in the dark.

They were not made alike. Some of them had two eyes and some had three. Some had eyes in the middle of their foreheads. Some had tongues so long they could not close their mouths, and some had no tongues at all. Some had three breasts and some had only one leg. Some wore three matted braids on their heads and some had a single eye and nothing beside it. And others had blazing eyes and hair stiff as a camel's, and these and the rest of them stood around Sita, surrounding her day and night, most watchfully, so that in a garden built to look like heaven she was never once out of sight of a weapon.

Those Pisacha women had frightful voices and terrible aspects, and they always addressed that large-eyed lady in the harshest tones they could manage. They had a favourite way of doing it. They did it in front of her, to one another, as though she were meat already and could not hear.

"Let us eat her up," they said. "Let us mangle her. Let us tear her into pieces, her, that is, that dwelleth here disregarding our lord."

They said it every day. It was the whole of their argument and it never varied: submit to him, or we will devour you.

Filled with grief at the separation from her lord, Sita drew a deep sigh, and answered them. She did not answer the threat. She accepted it, which is a different thing, and it took the weapon out of their hands.

"Reverend ladies," she said, "eat me up without delay. I have no desire to live without that husband of mine, of eyes like lotus leaves and locks wavy and blue in hue."

And then, in case they thought she was merely despairing, she told them precisely what she was going to do with the time they left her.

"Truly I will, without food and without the least love of life, emaciate my limbs, like a she-snake within a Tala tree. Know this for certain: I will never seek the protection of any other person than the descendant of Raghu. Knowing this, do what ye think fit."

There was nothing to answer. She had offered them the only thing they had to threaten her with, and she had put a fast against a garrison, and she was going to win, because the one outcome Ravana could not permit was a dead Sita and the one outcome she was walking steadily toward was exactly that.

The Rakshasas with the dissonant voices went off to the king of the Rakshasas to represent to him everything she had said, and for the first time in months the grove was empty of guards.

It is worth noticing what they carried to him. Not that she had wept, or begged, or asked after her husband. They went to tell their lord that the prisoner had invited them to eat her, and had compared herself to a snake going into a hollow tree to starve, and had named the only man whose protection she would ever seek, and had then told them to do as they thought fit. There was nothing in that report he could use.

When those Rakshasas had gone away, one of their number stayed behind. Her name was Trijata. She was virtuous and agreeable in speech, and she came and sat by the princess of Videha and began to console her.

"Listen, O Sita. I will tell thee something. O friend, believe in what I say. O thou of fair hips, cast off thy fears, and listen.

"There is an intelligent and old chief of the Rakshasas known by the name of Avindhya. He always seeketh Rama's good, and he hath told me these words for thy sake, and told me to reassure and cheer thee and to say them in his name."

Then she said the message, and the message was three facts, delivered in order, by a counsellor of Ravana's own court risking his life to get them across a garden.

"Thy husband the mighty Rama is well, and is waited upon by Lakshmana. The blessed descendant of Raghu hath already made friends with Sugriva, the king of the monkeys, and is ready to act for thee.

"And, O timid lady, entertain thou no fear on account of Ravana, who is censured by the whole world. Thou art safe from him on account of Nalakuvera's curse. This wretch was cursed long ago for having violated his daughter-in-law Rambha, and the curse is this: that this lustful wretch is not able to violate any woman by force. He cannot touch thee. He has not been able to touch thee since the day he brought thee here.

"Thy husband will soon come, protected by Sugriva and with the intelligent son of Sumitra in his train, and will take thee away hence."

"And there is one more thing," said Trijata. "I have had a most terrible dream of evil omen, indicating the destruction of this wicked-minded wretch of Pulastya's race. Deprived of his senses by Fate, he challengeth the very gods. In my vision I have seen every indication of his downfall.

"I have seen the Ten-headed with his crown shaven and his body besmeared with oil, sunk in mire, and the next moment dancing on a chariot drawn by mules.

"I have seen Kumbhakarna and the others, perfectly naked, with their crowns shaven, decked with red wreaths and red unguents, running towards the southern direction.

"Vibhishana alone I beheld with an umbrella held over his head, and graced with a turban, his body decked with white wreaths and white unguents, ascending the summit of the White hill. And I saw four of his counsellors also, decked in white, ascending that summit along with him. All this bodeth that these alone will be saved out of the terror that is coming.

"The whole earth with its oceans and its seas will be enveloped with Rama's arrows. Thy husband will fill the whole earth with his fame. I saw Lakshmana too, consuming all directions with his arrows, ascending upon a heap of bones and drinking honey there, and rice boiled in milk.

"And thou, O lady, wert beheld by me running towards a northerly direction, weeping, and covered with blood, and protected by a tiger. O princess of Videha, soon wilt thou find happiness, being united with thy lord, that descendant of Raghu, and with his brother beside him."

Hearing these words of Trijata, that girl with eyes like a young gazelle's began once more to entertain hopes of a union with her lord. And when at last the fierce and cruel Pisacha guards came back, they saw nothing at all: only the prisoner sitting with Trijata, as before.

She was dwelling there afflicted with melancholy and grief on account of her lord, attired in mean garb, seated on a stone, weeping incessantly, waited upon by Rakshasa women. Of all her ornaments she had one left: a single jewel on the marital thread on her wrist. She had kept that.

And Ravana, afflicted by the shafts of the god of desire, came to her and approached her presence.

He had dressed for it. That conqueror in battle of the gods, the Danavas, the Gandharvas, the Yakshas and the Kimpurushas came into the Asoka woods attired in celestial robes, possessed of handsome features, decked with jewelled earrings, wearing a beautiful garland and a crown, like an embodiment of the vernal season. Dressed with such care, Ravana looked like the Kalpa tree that stands in Indra's garden.

But though he was adorned with every embellishment, all of it inspired her only with awe, the way a beautified banian tree inspires awe in the middle of a cemetery: the ribbons and the paint make it worse, not better, because of what is underneath it. That night wanderer approaching that slender-waisted lady looked like the planet Saturn coming into the presence of the star Rohini.

She sat on her stone with her one jewel and watched him come, and she was frightened, and she looked like a helpless doe, and she did not get up.

Smitten with the shafts of the god of the flowery emblem, he accosted her. He had conquered gods in battle and had never in his life had to ask anyone for anything, and now he was standing in his own garden in his best crown, in front of a thin woman in bark cloth who had not eaten properly in a year, waiting to be told what she thought of him.

"Thou hast, O Sita, shown thy regard for thy lord too much," he said. "O thou of delicate limbs, be merciful unto me. Let thy person be embellished now by these maids in waiting. O excellent lady, accept me as thy lord."

Then he made his offer, and his offer was an inventory. He did not say one word about her. He talked about himself for as long as she would let him.

"Attired in costly robes and ornaments, take thou the first place among all the women of my household. Many are the daughters of the celestials that I possess, and of the Gandharvas also. I am lord of many Danava and Daitya ladies. One hundred and forty millions of Pisachas do my bidding, and twice as many man-eating Rakshasas of terrible deed, and thrice as many Yakshas. Some of these are under the sway of my brother, who is the lord of all treasures. In my drinking hall, Gandharvas and Apsaras wait upon me as they wait upon him.

"I am the son of that regenerate Rishi Visravas himself, of high ascetic merit. I am renowned as the fifth Regent of the Universe. Of food and edibles and drinks of the very best kind I have as much as the Lord of the celestials himself.

"Let all thy troubles consequent on a life in the woods cease. O thou of fair hips, be my Queen, as Mandodari herself."

He offered her the first place in a household of stolen women, and counted his soldiers at her, and mentioned his brother twice, and finished by naming his own wife as the standard she would be raised to.

The beautiful princess of Videha turned away, and regarded him as something less than a straw, and answered that wanderer of the night. Her tears were running as she spoke and her voice did not steady, and none of that made any difference to what she said.

"By sheer ill luck it is, O king of the Rakshasas, that I am obliged to hear such words of grievous import spoken by thee. Blessed be thou, O Rakshasa fond of sensual pleasures. Let thy heart be withdrawn from me. I am the wife of another, ever devoted to my husband, and therefore incapable of being possessed by thee. A helpless human being that I am, I cannot be a fit wife for thee. What joy can be thine by using violence towards an unwilling woman?"

Then she went after him in the one place he was vulnerable, which was his family.

"Thy father is a wise Brahmana, born of Brahma and equal unto that Lord himself of creation. Why dost thou not, therefore, thyself being equal to a Regent of the Universe, observe virtue? Disgracing thy brother, that king of the Yakshas, that adorable one who is the friend of Maheswara himself, that lord of treasures, how is it that thou feelest no shame?"

Having said these words, Sita began to weep, her bosom shivering in agitation, and she covered her neck and her face with her garments. Her long and well-knit braid, black and glossy, fell from her head as she bent, and looked like a black snake lying along her back.

And hearing those cruel words, the foolish Ravana, thus rejected, addressed her once more.

"O lady, let the god having the Makara for his emblem burn me sorely. I will, however, on no account approach thee, as thou art unwilling." And then, because he had to have the last word and did not have one: "What can I do to thee, that still feelest a regard for Rama, who is only a human being, and therefore our food?"

Having said that to a lady of faultless features, the king of the Rakshasas made himself invisible then and there, and went away to whatever place he liked.

And Sita, surrounded by those Rakshasa women, and treated with tenderness by Trijata, continued to dwell there in grief.

That is all. Nothing was rescued that day. The guards came back and took up their axes and their brands and their places, and the fast went on, and the woman on the stone had exactly what she had woken with, which was one jewel on a thread, a message she could not verify, and a refusal.

"He left with less than he came with," said Markandeya, in the Kamyaka wood, to a king who was listening very hard. "That is the whole of what happened. He came in dressed like the spring and counted a hundred and forty millions of servants at her, and she looked at him the way one looks at a straw on the floor, and he went out invisible because he could not bear to be seen walking. She did not have an army, or a brother, or a weapon, or a friend she could trust further than the end of one conversation. She had the ability to say no, and she used it, and it made her larger than the fifth Regent of the Universe in his own garden.

"Your wife did the same in a chariot on the road out of the Kamyaka, when a king of the Sindhus told her what she would be raised to if she were sensible. It is not a small thing, son of Kunti. Where a person has been stripped of every other means of acting, refusal is still an act, and it is enough."

Draupadi went on grinding the grain, and did not look up, and heard every word of it.