A story · Ramayana · The Exile

The Meeting at Chitrakuta

Valmiki Ramayana 2.99 · read aloud in the app

The story · English

When the soldiers had rested, Bharata turned to Shatrughna. "Take a band of men and these hunters, and search every thicket of this wood," he said. "Let Guha and his people, with their bows and swords, stay in this grove and look for the sons of Kakutstha's line. I will go on foot through the next stretch of forest, with the elders, the Brahmins, the lords and the townsfolk. I can't rest until I see Rama's face again, and Lakshmana, and Sita. I can't rest until I see his face, bright as the moon, and his eyes like lotus petals, and lay my head at his feet. I can't rest until my brother has his kingdom back and the sacred water of crowning is poured over him."

He went on, half to himself. "How blessed Janaka's daughter is, to stay faithful at her husband's side. How blessed this mountain is, to shelter him, the way the god of wealth delights in his garden of Nandana. Even this tangled grove full of wild beasts is fortunate, because Rama has made his home here." Then the strong-armed prince walked into the trackless woods, across meadows of flowering trees and through branches woven thick as a net. At last, rising above the trees, he saw a thin banner of smoke from a fire. Bharata and his friends were overjoyed. "Rama lives there," he thought. "We've crossed the ocean of our trouble at last." He halted the army where it stood, and went on with Guha.

Bharata pointed the place out to Shatrughna and hurried forward, first asking the sage Vasishtha to bring the widowed queens. Sumantra followed close behind, as anxious as Bharata himself to see Rama's face. Among the hermits' huts Bharata found a cottage roofed with leaves and a small shed beside it. Flowers and split firewood lay heaped in front, dry fuel stood ready against the cold, and bark and grass hung on the trees to mark the paths. "This must be the place Bharadvaja described," Bharata said. "The Mandakini can't be far. Elephants roam these slopes, and that smoke is the fire hermits keep alive." Then sorrow caught him. "It's because of me that the lord of the earth lives like this. I'll fall at his feet, and at Sita's, and beg his pardon."

As he grieved, he saw a large, lovely bower made of leafy branches, roofed neatly with palm and sal boughs, laid in rows like the sacred grass spread over an altar. Inside hung two great bows backed with gold, bright as Indra's rainbow, and quivers whose arrows blazed like the rays of the sun. Swords rested in cases of gold brocade, and shields with golden bosses hung beside the archer's arm-guards and gloves. The cottage was as safe from men as a lion's den is from other beasts. On the altar a fire burned, facing north and east. Bharata looked inside. There sat Rama, in a deerskin, with matted hair, broad-shouldered as a lion, his eyes like lotuses, Lakshmana beside him, and Sita with them.

For a while Bharata could not speak. Then he ran toward Rama, sobbing. "My elder brother should be sitting on a throne with his people around him, and here he sits among the wild animals. He used to wear the finest robes, and now he wears a deerskin. Flowers used to be woven into his hair, and now it's matted. His body used to be cool with sandal paste, and now it's stained by sun and dust and rain. And I am the reason. I wish I had never been born." Sweat stood on his forehead. He collapsed before he could reach his brother's feet, and all he could manage through his tears was, "My lord." Shatrughna bowed at Rama's feet and wept aloud. Rama, crying too, took both his brothers in his arms. Guha and Sumantra came forward to greet them, and the forest people, seeing the princes like this, wept with them.

Rama could barely recognise Bharata, he was so thin and changed. He lifted him, kissed his head, held him, and asked gently, "Where is our father, that you've come all this way? While he lives, you shouldn't be in the forest. Tell me why you've left the kingdom and come here in bark and matted hair." Bharata steadied himself, joined his palms, and answered. "Our father has done a terrible thing at my mother's bidding, and then, grieving for you, he left us and went to the gods. Queen Kaikeyi wanted power. Now she has lost both her son and her husband. Forgive me, my lord. Let yourself be crowned today. The queens, the old counsellors, and I are all asking. I am your brother, your student, your servant." He laid his head at Rama's feet and sighed heavily.

Rama replied, "How could someone like me, raised to keep his word, do wrong to win a kingdom? I see no fault in you. But don't blame your mother. A father has the right to set his son on a throne or send him to the forest, and a mother deserves the same honour. Our parents told me to go, and what else could I do? Our father gave you the kingdom and me the forest for fourteen years, and I'm content with that." Bharata answered, "Our family never gives the throne to a younger son while the elder lives. Come home and be king. Our father died soon after you left, while I was away in Kekaya. Shatrughna and I have made his offerings, but they say the water the dearest hand pours matters most. He thought of you to the very end."

The news struck Rama like Indra's thunderbolt. He threw up his arms and fell to the ground like a flowering tree cut down. Sita and his brothers rushed to him and, weeping, sprinkled water over him. When he came to, he cried, "What is there to go home to now? Who will guide me, and who will tell me I've done well, the way he used to?" Then he turned to Sita. "The king is gone." And to Lakshmana, "Your father is dead. Bharata has told me." They all wept. Rama asked Lakshmana for pressed ingudi fruit and a fresh bark cloth. "Sita will walk first, then you, and I last," he said. Sumantra gave Rama his arm and led him down to the river. In a clear shallow, they poured water and said, "Father, this is for you." Rama faced south and offered water from his cupped hands.

On the bank, Rama mixed ingudi seed with jujube fruit and set it on sacred grass. "Great king, accept this cake, the food your children eat," he wept. "The gods don't refuse what mortals eat." Then he climbed back up to the cottage and held his brothers close. Their weeping, and Sita's, rolled around the mountain like the roar of lions. Bharata's soldiers heard it and understood: the brothers had met and were mourning their father. Every man left his cart and ran toward the sound, on foot, on horseback, on elephants, as though Rama had been gone for years. The ground thundered. Elephants fled, deer and tigers and buffalo scattered, and birds filled the sky. The crowd, cursing the hunchback and the queen, found Rama at his place of worship. He embraced them as a parent would, and greeted each one kindly.

Vasishtha brought the widowed queens down to the river. Kaushalya, pale and weeping, saw the bank where the brothers fetched water, and then the offering on the sacred grass. "Look, this is Rama's gift to his father," she said. "Should a king who ruled the whole earth be fed on ingudi seed? The old saying is true: the gods eat what their children eat." At the hermitage Rama rose and touched the queens' feet, and they brushed the dust from his shoulders. Lakshmana bowed to them too. Sita knelt before them in tears, and they held her like a child, grieving over her worn face. Rama touched Vasishtha's feet and sat beside him. Bharata sat humbly behind, his palms joined, and everyone wondered what he would say. Rama, Lakshmana and Bharata shone there like three sacred fires surrounded by priests.

कथा · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Bharadvaja's Feast · Valmiki Ramayana 2.90
• Next: Jabali's Argument and the Praise of Truth · Valmiki Ramayana 2.108
• All of Ramayana · Ask Krishna about it

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