The Princes of Ayodhya-The Ramayan Through Short Stories

So Many Heads I've Lost Count!

Now, it was Rishabha, and Matha. Rishabha was known as being easily angered, ruthless and brutal. Rather, he didn't have a very conventional way of fighting, yes, you could say that. Why? Because Rishabha had unconventional fighting methods. Which was why he commanded such a large legion. Sugriv greatly valued the element of surprise in war, and Rishabha was nothing if he wasn't surprising.

With graying hair and what looked like weak and bent limbs, some rakshasas laughed at him as he came flying out of the clouds like some sort of monkey-angel banished from heaven. What would this monkey, after all, do to them, the rakshasas of Ravan? What they didn't seem to understand, even after weeks at the battlefield, was that no matter whom they fought for, whose kingdom they belonged to, they were killable, and monkeys wanted to kill them, and so they would die, and Ravan would not step off from his throne and save them.

There were only three sons of Ravan left, and Rishabha (current status: escaped from Heaven), had his beady eyes stuck on only one of them. And this was Matha, who was indeed, much less recognized than Devantak and Narantak, with good reason too. Still Matha (which meant head, though he had none and he soon, very literally, would lose it) was a jewel of Ravan's crown, though not the crown jewel, because that position always went to Indrajit, but still a shining one. An emerald to the Koh-i-Noor. He was not to be underestimated.

This rakshas did not use his head to fight. He was all claws, ruthlessness wrought with iron and thrust into the very being and purpose of his being. Every man, animal, giant, and demon, son of Ravan or otherwise, was born on the Earth with a purpose, and Matha's sole purpose seemed to be finding a way to kill the vanars who challenged him with the most painful of strategies. It was as if he was competing for a sort of medal.

But it took one to know one. Rishabha landed behind Matha, and kicked him in the very small of the back. Matha went flying, or rather, skidding, his clawed feet digging into the Earth, dirt dithering in the crevices of his nails as he fought against momentum to stop. In one second, he had whirled around, grasping his spiked club harder than ever as he eyed his newest opponent. And in moments, he had burst into laughter.

"Y-You?!" he cackled., clutching his stomach for a moment as Rishabha seethed, raising a cynical eyebrow as if truly interested in what Matha was saying. "F-F-Fight against me? What are you, thousands of years old? Greying hair, weakening limbs, fur wiry and thin! Are you some sort of a grandfather? Go back, dadu, go back and fetch someone who might be the same age as me! Read your grandchildren goodnight and wait for your mercenaries to be bathed in blood!" Matha puffed out his chest.

Middle Of Passage Bonus Scene

Lakshman gnawed his dirty nails thoughtfully, before quickly grabbing a piece of parchment. Ram looked over curiously as his brother etched numbers into the paper. "Wow, Lakshman!' he exclaimed, and some monkeys walked over too, Sugriv and Aniya being some of them. "I've never seen you doing math before, and right in the middle of a battle? You really are improving! Good job!" He cuffed his younger brother's shoulders proudly.

"See," Lakshman said after turning a little red in the fingertips (not the ears, the fingertips). "Papa beat Ravan in the early years of his rule. He drove him back into the island of Lanka. By then, Ravan was already a well-known, terrible sort of rakshas. Which means that Ravan must be at least seventy thousand years old. He married Matha's mother, Maharani Dhanyamalini when he was about fifty thousand years old, only a few years after Maharani Mandodari, for she doesn't seem to age, and we read about the magnificent wedding in the scriptures." Ram nodded to affirm his words as Angad choked at his words.

"Matha is a little younger than Meghnad, who, based on the average time spent after marriage before having children being three years, is about nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety seven years old, which means that Matha is about the same age. Matha married his wife after about twenty years of living, which means that logically, if his own son married at about the same age, that Matha has many thousands of great grandchildren, which means that he is much older and much more of a grandfather than General Rishabha will ever be-"