The trouble had been going on for a very long time.
Ravana, the ten-headed king of Lanka, was not a simple villain. He was a scholar of the Vedas and a master of weaponry and a devoted worshipper of Shiva who had so pleased the Lord with his austerities that he had received boons of near-invincibility. He was also, by the same measure, the most dangerous being in the three worlds — because power and learning without humility and compassion become the exact opposite of what they appeared to promise.
He had conquered the three worlds. He had driven the gods from their positions. He had imprisoned Indra himself, briefly, before releasing him out of a kind of contemptuous generosity. He had replaced the natural order with his own will, and his will — however magnificently adorned with scholarship — was fundamentally the will of someone who had never genuinely considered whether what he wanted was what the universe needed.
The gods gathered and prayed. They came to Vishnu, the preserver, whose function is precisely to restore balance when the scales have tilted too far.
‘We cannot defeat him ourselves,’ Brahma said. ‘His boons protect him from gods and demons and all supernatural forces. But he forgot to ask for protection against human beings. He thought human beings too weak to matter.’
Vishnu listened to the prayer of the gods and agreed to help. He would be born as a human — a genuine human, subject to ordinary human limitations, without the easy access to divine power that would make the contest meaningless. He would work through courage and righteous action and the love of those around him. He would show what a human being could be when fully aligned with dharma.
The kingdom of Ayodhya was ruled by King Dasharatha, a good and generous king who had spent his life in the right conduct of a ruler but whose heart held one persistent grief: he had no heir. His three queens — Kaushalya, Kaikeyi, and Sumitra — had not given him children, and without a son, the dynasty that he was custodian of would end with him.
He performed the Putrakameshti yajna — a great fire ceremony for the desire of a son — conducted by the great sage Rishyashringa. The fire was so powerful that a divine being emerged from its flames bearing a golden vessel of sacred pudding.
‘Give this to your queens,’ the being said. ‘Those who eat of it will bear sons who are the answer to a king’s prayer — and much more than that.’
Dasharatha divided the pudding with tender care, according to what seemed right to him. Kaushalya received half. Kaikeyi received a quarter. Sumitra received the remaining quarter.
Nine months later, on the ninth day of the bright fortnight of the month of Chaitra, in the moment when the sun stood in Aries and the auspicious nakshatras aligned, Kaushalya gave birth to a son.
He was dark-skinned as a rain cloud, his eyes like lotus petals, his face containing a radiance that made those who looked at him feel they had been looking at the sun and at the moon simultaneously, had seen something that transcended ordinary beauty.
In the heavens, the gods scattered flowers. In the streets of Ayodhya, people who had not yet received any news found themselves inexplicably joyful, as though the whole atmosphere had shifted into a state of grace. Musicians played who had not intended to. Women began to sing. Children laughed at nothing. The birds of the kingdom lifted in great flocks, calling.
They named him Rama.
Shortly after, Kaikeyi’s son Bharata was born, and then Sumitra’s twins — Lakshmana and Shatrughna. Four princes, but among the four, everyone who looked at Rama had the impression of looking at something that slightly exceeded the category of prince.
Dasharatha watched his four sons grow with the particular joy of a father who had waited a long time and got more than he had asked for. Rama was the eldest and the heir, but more than that — he was the kind of child who creates around himself a field of effortless rightness. He was obedient not because he was told to be but because obedience to what was right seemed to him the most natural thing. He was brave not because he sought glory but because turning away from what needed to be done was simply not a mode he had access to.
Lakshmana was his shadow from birth, unwilling to be separated from his elder brother for more than moments, his devotion absolute and uncomplicated. Where Rama went, Lakshmana went. What Rama needed, Lakshmana provided. Together they were something more than either was alone.
The sage Vishvamitra came when the princes were adolescents and asked the king for them — to protect his sacrifices from the demons that disrupted them. Dasharatha was reluctant; Vishvamitra was persuasive. The princes went. In the forest, they received divine weapons. Rama killed the demoness Tataka. He defeated others.
And they came to Mithila, where a king named Janaka had a daughter and a bow and a riddle that had been waiting for the right answer.
The story that began in a fire ceremony and was announced by flowers in the sky was only just starting. The blue prince of Ayodhya had arrived in the world, and the world was about to discover what it meant to be the recipient of such a gift.