The Princes of Ayodhya-The Ramayan Through Short Stories

A Minute, an Hour, an Eternity

  In Kosala, the dawn became noon, and the noon lasted for only a minute.

Shrutakirti spent the sixty seconds with a silver plate of rose petals, scattering them upon the pathway which her sister and brothers would take back into their rightful palace. The moment they emerged from Chitrakut, she would make sure that their bare feet were no longer pierced by gravel and sharp stones.

Ayodhya was no place to find peace, not now. Citizens from the edge of Kosala had been flocking to the city for some time, flooding in through the walls, the doors which the guardsmen had thrown open with huge smiles.

But so far from Ayodhya, in the place where it all began (the place where Shrutakirti's happiness ended), it was silent. Just the wind, and the pebbles skipping across the pathway, and one princess of Kosala with her rose petals.

Rose petals were always Ram and Sita's favorite. They represented the couple well, Shrutakirti thought. Despite constantly being pricked by thorns, they would always produce the most beautiful petals, the richest colors.

Shrutakirti hadn't taken the regency as badly as Shatrughan had. She appreciated the new perspective it had given her, much before the time for introspection had arrived. People would hate her, and they didn't need a reason to hate her, and she would just have to accept that. There was no way she could make everyone like her. She could give flowers and be kind and never speak out and remain the docile doll everyone wanted her to be, and still be loathed.

"You don't hate me, right?" she asked to the handful of petals which lay crumpled in her palm. The flowers were the refuge she found in these fourteen years. And it was a very difficult refuge to find, since all the flowers in Kosala seemed determined to wilt.

Fourteen years had passed. It hit her all at once, the gravity of the time which had been ripped away from her. She had been nineteen. Now she was...

Thirty three.

The flowers couldn't possibly understand.

She opened her fist and let the petals flitter away in the breeze, dancing like the rejoicing citizens of Ayodhya. "I don't care if anyone likes me at all. I have the people who belong to me. And they are all I need."

Her last pace, Ram's first pace, was finally covered in a mosaic of red, and tucking her pallu back over her hair, Shrutakirti stepped onto the carriage which waited for her beside the path.

Instead of looking out the window, she sat in the middle of the seat and shut her eyes. Rocking back and forth, the youngest princess wondered how quickly the flowers would bloom when Dasharathnandan stepped foot unto his motherland again.

-----O------

Sixty seconds was a lot of time to do nothing.

Then again, Mandavi had spent this whole exile doing nothing. Shrutakirti had been the regent to a throne, Urmila had been the strength of their family, and Sita didi was doing whatever princesses did in jungles, but Mandavi had been doing just about nothing.

If she hadn't been mourning for the past fourteen years, she might have laughed at how much her earlier self would have hated this new her. Mopey. Lazy. Hours before her sister and brothers were due to return, sitting in her apartments and watching her reflection.

The moment when she'd found out they were returning was cathartic. There was no way to describe it.

Mandavi had always looked up to Sita. She knew how the pairings went, of course. Sita-Urmila, Mandavi-Shrutakirti. But how was it fair to draw lines based on blood? Could she and Sita not share a dear bond too?