My Name Is Ravana Read online

  Those were hurtful words and I must admit that I felt a surge of anger at his meanness. My fingers instinctively curled into a fist and I gave him a great blow. Hanuman crumbled before me. I think the light went out of his eyes for a few seconds.

  He recovered soon and that’s the way with great warriors. The first blows are ones we throw to assess our opponent. In minutes we were locked in a hand-to-hand combat; our punches and blows at each other went on for a while. In my head I was also calculating time. After all, I needed to move forward. I did not want to get stuck here with Hanuman for long time. I made a quick appraisal and then hooked a deep punch to Hanuman’s solar plexus. It took the air out of his lungs and the impact lifted him off the ground. He fell down at a distance. Before he recovered, I moved forward and initiated fight with Neela.

  Seeing me fighting with Neela, Hanuman, following the war rules, stood aside and eagerly waited for me to complete my fight with Neela.

  My fight with Neela could be the best example of how tough and strange the Rama-Ravana yudha was. Neela indeed surprised not just me but even his own men. With the unique talent that very few vanaras had, he made himself too small in size and stood right on my chariot. Hitting me; getting back on the chariot; hitting me; getting back on the chariot—he did this over and over again. It was beyond annoying and you can imagine the frustration I must have felt attempting to battle such a small creature, that too on my own chariot. It took long time and all the while it was only me taking those hits. I then used Aagneya Asthram (fire missile) in such a way that it passed close to him but not touch my chariot. The tremendous speed and heat at which it penetrated into the atmosphere made Neela resistant and he fell down. Lucky champ, he became weak but didn’t die. Perhaps this was because of the relationship that Neela shared with Agni (the fire god).

  Lakshmana came forward.... It was a great fight. Loved it. He countered all my missiles and arrows. He was brilliant at war. We fought almost till the dusk. I then decided to use a special weapon that was gifted to me by my great grandfather Brahma. When it hit Lakshmana, he lost his consciousness and fell down. I tried lifting him onto my chariot but by then Hanuman with firing eyes hit me badly on my chest and recaptured Lakshmana. That punch was enormous. Had he hit a rock it would have shattered into a thousand pieces. As for me, I just fell on my knees and vomited blood and slowly fainted.

  The Sun was almost going down before both me and Lakshmana gained our senses. I opened my eyes and saw Hanuman enhanced his body to a mighty size and Rama was sitting on his shoulders. I started hitting Hanuman but then Rama attacked my chariot wheels, horses and flag. I fell down on the ground with nothing. Rama took another arrow and I saw him fitting it to his bow. I thought that this was the arrow that was going to end this mission. But instead of aiming at the centre of my forehead, he merely used the arrow to knock off my crown. Startled I looked at him. He said, “O Great Warrior King you fought well. Now you have nothing, no chariot, no flag and no crown. Killing you now is no big deal but that’s not my way. Moreover, you are tired now. I will not kill you now. Leave now. Take rest and come back with your full power and new chariot. You will see my power tomorrow.”

  I was impressed. This man knew his war field ethics. That is called Goodness.

  MY REVIEW

  I came back to my palace. It was absolute silence. I sat on my throne, closed my eyes and recapped all my deeds as Ravana. One after the other I surfed the incidents in my head. The incidents of Anaranyu King of Ishwaaku Dynasty, Vedavathi, Parvathi, Nandeeswara, Rambha and Pumjikastala also flashed in my mind. These incidents happened before the birth of Rama and Sita.

  Amazing. Sri Maha Vishnu is amazing. Anaranyu said that a person from his dynasty will see my end and Maha Vishnu took Sri Rama avatara in his dynasty of Ishwaaku. Vedavathi said that I would kill because of her and she herself took the form of Sita in this yuga. Finally, all the curses on me were taking shape. Which means, without my knowledge Sri Hari guided all this while teaching bad to this world. Wow. I bow before the amazing orchestration of The Almighty.

  Then suddenly, my role as Jaya, the Dwarapaalaka (gate keeper) flashed in my mind. That made me realise my omission. I had forgotten to involve my brother Vijaya (Kumbakarna) in the war. This could be the reason why Sri Rama sent me back today. That means, Hanuman fighting with me till the bloodshed, me becoming tired, the battle prolonging till sunset. in fact everything was His Play. I just did the way He made me do. Sri Rama, after all, was the incarnation or reflection of that Ultimate in Vaikuntam.

  I felt a surge of happiness. I no longer needed to rest. With my enlightenment I became fully rejuvenated. I need to quickly correct my mistake and finish my job as Ravana on this earth. I called my men and instructed them to wake up Kumbhakarna and convey the message that I wanted to see him.

  My men with great difficulty woke Kumbhakarna. He was fed with enormous amount of food. Once he was satiated, Yupaaksha explained the war situation to him and Mahodhara conveyed my message. Kumbhakarna came to me. On seeing him I just hugged him tight, unable to speak for a while. Tears of joy rolled down my eyes. He too understood the situation as Vijaya, took both my arms into his hands and looked into my eyes with great amount of pride and satisfaction.

  We both asked our men to leave us alone for some time. We sat together and shared our feelings with each other for a mission about to get accomplished. We then thought that the only thing left was to fight against Good and that was Rama. We together decided to stick to our roles and fight our best with Rama. We decided to forget or at least try to forget that Rama was Sri Hari and to treat him as we would have treated a true enemy. This mindset would help us make this Yudha (war) more tough. After all we needed to be talked about for as long as there is life on Earth.

  We called in Mahodhara and instructed him to create the plan of action for the next course of battle. Mahodhara proposed a team comprising himself, Dwijihvu, Samhradhi, Kumbakarna and Vitardhana to open the war from our side, at daybreak.

  THE FINAL COMBAT PART 4

  I had almost approved the plan, when Mahodhara began stammering and humming, “If in case ... aaaa... erm....”

  “What is it!?” I asked him, impatiently. It is not nice to see a warrior with such unease. “Tell us. There is no need to hide anything,” added Kumbakarna.

  Mahodhara took a deep breath and said, “My Lords, we have seen all our great warriors losing one after the other and so I had thought of an alternative as well. As per the plan if Rama is dead, it is good. But in case that doesn’t happen, here is what I think we can and should do as an alternate strategy. So Plan B is that in case we are not able to finish off Rama, we return with wounded, mutilated bodies and declare that Rama is dead. We will do this in front of you oh great King Ravana and in front of our women. The message of Rama’s death will spread like quickfire to Sita in Asoka vanam. In the meantime, you Sire can send more women with great amount of jewellery and garments to Sita, pretending that you are celebrating Rama’s death. This will make her think that Rama is really dead. As there is no choice she will surrender herself to Ravana. Once Sita surrenders herself, we will see that we let Rama and his army know of it. Once they know of it, of Sita’s acquiescence there will be no point for Rama to stay in Lanka, for even a minute.” Before he could go on Kumbakarna (Vijaya) got ferocious and shouted, “People like you around my brother Ravana is the first and the only cause for he being defamed at this speed. Another word on Sita will make me tear you into pieces. Get away from my sight!”

  Mahodara scuttled off.

  I calmed Kumbakarna down and whispered into his ears, “Not just Mahodara, none of our men have much confidence in us in this battle. I have received many such suggestions. In fact one such idea had already been attempted; it failed. Don’t worry I did it as a part of our mission.”

  Both of us thought for a while and then agreed that Kumbakarna alone would open the battle when the day began. This decided, we split.

  When the sun ros
e, Kumabakarna took his special weapon made of solid iron with jewels embedded in it and started moving towards the battle ground with eyes as red as morning Sun. I sent some of my army with him, too.

  At this stage, Kumbakarna had only one thing in mind and that was to forget that he was about to clash with Sri Hari. He made it a point to programme his mind to assume that Rama was only a human and he was going to kill that man and finish off the man’s army.

  Seeing the mighty Kumbakarna wading into the battlefield, the vanaras just scattered and ran away. Vibhishana—his presence of mind was awesome— played a great trick here: he summoned Nala, Neela, Gavaksha, Kumudha and Angadha and asked them to create a misinformation that the mighty-looking person named Kumbakarna was not a living being at all, it was just a machine made by the enemy’s army to scare us all. Paying heed to this propoganda the vanaras returned to the battlefield with bolstered courage. I laughed, acknowledging the wonderful mind-game that Vibhishana just played to inject courage with his army of vanaras.

  The poor vanaras returned and started attacking and hitting the so-called machine. The ‘machine’ didn’t even move a bit like a real machine. More and more vanaras surged towards Kumbakarna and he at once crushed them. Whole land around was just the flesh and blood. The vanaras had a bad morning. Terrified of the force before them the vanaras started running away. Some of them jumped into the sea, while many hid themselves in the trees and few ran back on to the bridge with the intention of going back to Kishkinda.

  Angadha called them all back. He and Hanuman first calmed them down and then bolstered them. They reminded the vanaras on how a warrior needed to be; after all they were all warriors and turning back from the battle field for a warrior is equal to dying. Instead of running away, a true warrior looked forward to dying on battlefield because dying with a sword in hand during battle is a way to heaven. The vanaras listened.

  Then strategy was altered. Hanuman with twelve warriors—Rushana, Sarabha, Maindha, Dhumra, Neela, Kumudha, Susena, Gavaksha, Rambhu, Thara, Dwividha and Panasa—targeted Kumbakarna’s army rather than Kumbakarna, bringing down his men, chariots, elephants and horses.

  Hanuman flew in the air, throwing many rocks and uprooting trees and flinging them onto Kumbakarna. But Kumbakaran was undaunted by all this. He started chasing the vanara to smash them. Hanuman decided to intervene. He flew right up to my brother and bashed him in the cheek with a huge rock. Ouch! That did hurt Kumba. Kumba roared with great anger and swung his weapon hard, smashing and killing everything on his way. In his blind pain vanaras and his own men were killed. The pain was so much that he ended up killing few thousands in no time.

  Neela observed the growing fear within the vanara and threw a mighty rock on Kumba. My brother merely crushed it to powder. Five vanaras jumped at once on to Kumba, but he swung out and smashed them with ease. Thousand of vanaras started jumping on him; it was again of no use. That is KUMBAKARNA, my loving brother Vijaya.

  The battle which Rama’s army was dealing with ease, suddenly notched up. The game changed. It became tough to the opposite. With Kumba in the picture a great cheer rose in our battalion. Everyone assumed that the victory would be ours. Our men in the palace were filled with joy. The vanaras had no idea on how to handle Kumbhakarna. They ran to Rama and explained the situation. Angadha threw another mighty rock on to Kumbakarna. In rage, Kumbakarna threw his weapon at Angadha. Angadha dodged the weapon swiftly and escaped narrowly. He then jumped close to Kumbakarna and hit him straight in his chest as hard as he could. It was a mighty blow and Kumbakarna almost blanked out. Recovering quickly he counter-attacked Angadha, hit him and moved towards Sugreeva. If Sugreeva, the king of vanaras got killed, vanaras would lose morale and be weakened immediately.

  Kumbakarna took his weapon and threw it on Sugreeva but Hanuman intervened; caught it and broke it into two. Kumbakarna quickly picked up a rock and threw it onto the vanara King. It hit its mark and Sugreeva fainted. Kumbakarna picked up the monkey king and sent him with his soldiers who took him back into Ravana’s fort. With Sugreeva absent, we hoped that the vanaras would lose their faith in the battle completely.

  Hanuman’s instinct, with Sugreeva taken away, was to attack my fort and bring back Sugreeva. Then he calmed down. His king Sugreeva had his own powers. Turning to his vanara he said, “I believe in my King. I will not go to rescue him. I need not. As soon he will gain his consciousness he will be back here. I need not attend to him. My necessity is not with him but to you, my brothers.” As he was motivating vanaras, Sugreeva regained his consciousness, tore Kumbakarnas skin with his claws, hurting him badly and returned back to the vanara sena. Hanuman’s motivational speech and Sugreeva’s return bolstered Rama’s army no end. They surged into the battlefield with great energy and confidence.

  Kumbakarna stood silent for a while and turned back to the battlefield. Lakshmana started shooting his arrows on to Kumbakarna but Kumbakarna barely paid attention to Lakshmana’s archery. He started moving swiftly towards Rama. Rama hit Kumbakarna with a deadly missile to which Kumbakarna fell down. Lakshmana instructed vanaras to stand on Kumbakarna and render him immobile. But Kumbakarna merely heaved up and threw vanaras away by standing straight.

  Making a warning sound with his bow string, Rama shouted, “Come on Kumbakarna, you might have battled and won Indra! But you need to understand that this is not Indra. You are fighting with Rama!” Feigning anger, Kumbakarna walked closer to Rama and retorted, “Rama, this is not Kara. This is not Vali. This is not Maricha. I am Kumbakarna.”

  And with that started the great battle started between Rama and Kumbakarna. The battle that ensued had men on both the sides stopping to watch. Arrows and missiles were set loose that killed many warriors like Vali, Kara and Dushana. Rama was mighty but so was Kumbakarna. The battle went on and on and on. The men watching it grew tired, yet Rama and Kumbakarna went on without a pause; they seemed unstoppable.

  Finally, Rama took out and released the Vayuva Asthram (the missile of great storm and tornado). The missile was so powerful that it sucked out Kumbakarnas hand from his body. Kumbakarna shouted aloud. Yet, even as his hand was pulled out he picked and uprooted a tree and hurled it at Rama. Rama swiftly dodged it and escaped, releasing Indraasthram (another powerful missile), chopping off Kumba’s other arm. By the time Kumba realized it, Rama swiftly released two half-moon shaped arrows and chopped both his legs.

  Kumbakarna screamed with great pain. Rama continued releasing arrows all over Kumbakarna including his wide open and shouting mouth and finally separated Kumbakarna’s head from the body.

  My brother. My dear ally in many lives, no more. But did I grieve?

  You, as reader should understand from Kumbhakarna’s story that though Kumbakarna was good throughout his life he supported bad at the end. A good person supporting bad is good no more. He deserves nothing less than the bad which is meted out to him.

  THE FINAL COMBAT PART 5

  So no. I did not grieve for Kumba. I am happy for him. He finished his task assigned for the Threthaa Yugha. I needed to finish mine too.

  I was clear on what and how to act upon for the next few days. My death should be the last death in this war. With my death the world should see a light and that light should be through Rama. My death should transform Rama from a mere mortal to God. Rama is a reflection of Sri Maha Vishnu on earth and after Rama-Ravana Yudha one should be able to identify the qualities of Godliness; that is Sri Maha Vishnu through Rama. My divine task would be complete only after this is achieved.

  For all this to happen Rama-Ravana Yudha should be so ferocious and so very memorable not just mankind but also for anything and everything that exist including the nature and other Divines.

  Before I leave this flesh I hope I can use all the powers, strengths, army, weapons and sciences I have earned in this lifetime through my penances in this war. Ram has to win—and he will win—despite my using the utmost power given to me. Only this way will one be able to set an example to man
kind as to how much more powerful you are and that how much ever technology and weaponry one has, you or infact anyone else in the universe will not be able to defeat Good.

  I started giving instructions one after the other and dispatching one troop after the other to fight Rama and his sena. Triseera, Athikaya, Devanthaka, Narathaka, Mahodhara and Mahapaarsvu went to the battle. It would be war that this earth had never seen before. Naranthaka performed brilliantly, killing many vanaras. Angadha started battling with Naranthaka and finally knocked him out to death.

  Witnessing Narantaka being killed, Mahodhara, Devanthaka and Triseera attempted to attack Angadha all together. Seeing this Hanuman and Neela rushed to his rescue. A great battle ensued and after a huge tussle Hanuman killed both Devanthaka and Triseera, while Neela took Mahodhara’s life. While this fight was on, on the other side Rushaba knocked down Mahapaarsvu. As one leader after another fell, their respective troops dispersed to save their own lives.

  Then entered Athikaya. Athikaya is built like mini Kumbhakarna. Rama enquired and Vibhishana said, “Athikaya’s identity is my son with Dhanyamalini.” He also disclosed his strength in archery. Rama sent Lakshmana to face Athikaya. Before even Lakshmana aimed his first arrow at Athikaya, he took Kumudha, Dvividha, Maindha, Neela and Saraba into his custody.

  On seeing Lakshmana, Athikaya laughed and said, “You are not of my range, you cannot stand in combat with me for long. Pack up and leave.” Then scornfully turning to Rama he said, “You had better turn up and try your luck.” In response to his taunt, Lakshmana notched an arrow and rang his bow string as the sign of warning and shouted, “Stop talking. Let’s have some action!”