Adikavi ~ The First Poet
I was here before the forest. I was here when the Earth, who accepts everything and refuses nothing, admitted that first scant handful of seeds. I was here, those years like moments, when the forest desired itself into being, when the trees leapt up to create and to break the lines of sight. My bare feet know this ground, my gnarled fingers are intimate with every knot on every trunk. Here, between the trees, in the play of shadow and light, I see the meadow still. The forest conceals what’s dormant but not entirely gone from this world. Nothing is truly irretrievable. Landscapes and histories are simply revised.
I was no poet. Not then. Not yet. I was simply old. My heart was as hoary and moth-eaten as my loin cloth. My beard as matted as the underbrush. Though I walked with heavy effort my bones were birdlike. Fragile. Even leaning heavily upon my staff I saw the world from half my former height.
For centuries, they’ve come to the ashram. A steady, hapless tide. Always knocking. Always hungry. Always wanting, wanting, wanting. Wanting only what they want, wearing me out with their bumbling service and sincerity. Exhausting me with beseeching eyes that see not what’s right before them. Hearing only what they choose to hear, never asking what I have true to offer.
When she came, it was different. She was different. But she comes later.
Sometimes, when their debilitating earnestness has sucked me dry, I leave them entirely. I leave them to wonder, never telling where I go. They sulk then, slump like dogs left behind but I never asked to be their master. I endure it. I accept the hand this lifetime's dealt me. I recognize my obligation but, surely, even sages are entitled to the occasional day off? And so I leave for just a few stolen days. I leave them to wander, solitary in the dappled light, to look to the sky, to the winged ones. I look to those who soar above it all, who take great height as their perspective. I look to the ones for whom gravity is but a trifle and the the earth below a mere speck. And if I dream of taking wing, of leaving these desiccated old bones and this earth behind, well, it’s no one’s business but my own.
My destination is constant. I arrive where, ultimately, I always end, at the modest home of my old friend, Narada. As ancient as I am, his company is the sweet relief of homecoming. What I forget he remembers for me. He ushers me in, his familiarity even more refreshing than the cool drink he offers. He knows me better than I know myself. He’s read my impatience in the night skies. He’s been expecting me.
“I was growing worried, old friend. What delayed you?”
I sit and feel my bones settle. These days even my slight weight is burdensome. I drink deeply. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”
We sit easily. Around us, concentrically, grows a great silence. Even the birds wind their song to conclusion. They know they can't compete. The forest holds its breath.
In the old days, I’d have to ask. “Tell me,” I’d beg, “Is there, in all this world, even one who is virtuous? Is there but one who is righteous and good natured? One who is skillful, self-controlled, firm in resolve and exemplary in conduct? Is there one who is sovereign over anger? One who is free from jealousy? Is there one who’s spirit shines as the very light of dharma itself, Narada? Tell me, for I am weary and of heavy heart. Is there a hope for this world? Is there even one?”
He’d smile as he did when we were boys, as though I were a small boy still.
“You know as well as I do, my cantankerous friend. There is but Rama. It’s he who is, in nature, deep like the ocean, vast like the Himalayas and supportive as the earth. It’s Prince Rama who embodies as the avatar of the great god Vishnu himself. It is Rama who casts the light of dharma before us.”
But that was a long time ago. I no longer need ask. Narada knows why I’m here. He knows what I want. My presence is question enough.
One hundred verses, he sings to me, in praise of Ram. We savor his song long into the silence that follows and then, thus fortified, and with the support of a staff I didn’t always need, I haul myself to my feet. I take his hand in mine and we look long upon each other. We will meet again and again but who knows if it will be in this world. Perhaps not.
I take his leave. No need to retrace my footsteps. I know my way, could find it in the dark. When I occasionally encounter my own footprints, several days old now, heading back the way I’ve come, I can’t help but feel like something haunted. I’m happy when, at midday, the shadows recede and I come upon a river who’s waters are as clear as the mind of that one I’ve journeyed to remember. I’ll bathe, I decide, and, wary of my brittle bones, the last thing I need is a broken hip, follow along the water’s reedy edge looking for a clearing with even footing, a suitable place to step into the current.
I hear them before I see them, the sky suddenly full of song. And then there they are, overhead, the two entwined as one, impossibly lithe, heart-catchingly lissome. The entire sky a mere backdrop for their loveplay. Up and up, my spirits untethered now rise as with the cranes. I’m nothing but song, but sky, but flight. I’m poised upon the very edge of infinity when I feel it as though through my own heart, the arrow. Pierced, I plummet as he plummets. I shriek as she shrieks. For an eternity, nothing but nauseating pain and then, ensnared once again inside my own body, I turn and see him, the hunter, bow in hand. A flutter of feathers. One falls impossibly slowly before my feet.
It rises out of me with a life of its own, the curse. For all my ascetical practice, unstoppable in the face of such heartless cruelty, I vomit it out. When I curse him it’s as though I’ve been born to do it. The curse slithers from my lips in verse, with the grace of a viper, as though all my days had been devoted to burnishing these words into a perfect couplet.
Almost immediately I remember myself. Aghast that I’ve behaved as brutishly as this barbarian, I attempt to temper the curse. “It shall be a verse not a curse.” Still, what’s done is done. Words, once spoken, cannot be unspoken. Karmas, set in motion must play out to the endings that were always contained in their beginnings.
Back at the ashram I wearily worship Brahman. Out of the ashes of a curse a blessing must rise.
On the horizon are two silhouettes headed straight for the ashram. Hungry, no doubt.
I am Valmiki.
The Ramayana is not my story.
It belongs to Ram but never to him alone.
It’s hers too.
This is her story.
