Prince of Dharma by Ashok Banker Page B

maharaja. 
     
    ‘Ayodhya-naresh, I am pleased to inform you that an even more auspicious event has occurred this fine first day of spring. A very great and divine personage has chosen to grace us with his presence. I do not yet know what his arrival here means, but certainly it is an auspicious and momentous visitation. Maharaja Dasaratha, count yourself among the few fortunate kings of Ayodhya. For you have none other than the renowned seermage Vishwamitra standing at your gates. Come with me, and let us receive him with all ceremony.’ 
     
    It took every ounce of Dasaratha’s will not to stop dead in his tracks. 

SIX 
     
    Lakshman and Shatrugan woke at the exact same instant. They finished their ablutions quickly, dressed and came out of their bedchambers at the same time. Falling into step beside his younger brother—by twenty minutes—Shatrugan slapped him on the back affectionately. 
     
    ‘No sword today, Luck?’ 
     
    Lakshman gestured at Shatrugan’s hip. ‘You neither, Shot. Because it’s forbidden by maharaja’s law to carry arms on a feast day. Or did you forget that during your long, rigorous training in the forest at Guru Vashishta’s gurukul?’ 
     
    Shatrugan mirrored Lakshman’s toothy grin. ‘I don’t know about rigorous, but it surely was long. I was beginning to think we would spend the best years of our lives in that hermitage in the middle of nowhere.’ 
     
    ‘Well, now you’re back in the lap of luxury.’ Lakshman gestured at the opulence of their surroundings, the princely annexe, a section of the king’s palace. ‘You must feel like you died and went to swarga-loka.’ He corrected himself: ‘Or came back to swarga-loka.’ 
     
    Shatrugan shrugged. ‘Yes, it is heavenly, isn’t it? But somehow, brother, it doesn’t seem real any more. I mean, I remember it from when we were little. Then it was all we knew, our entire cosmos. But after eight years in the forest, living off the land, sleeping on clay floors, dirt under our fingernails all the time, straw in our hair, all this feels … you know … ’ 
     
    ‘Maya. An illusion? Like it could vanish at any time?’ Lakshman snapped his fingers, the sound echoing in the silent corridors they were walking through. Except for the occasional curtsying serving girl or maid, the vast halls were empty. Each prince had a suite of seven chambers to himself, with several more additional ones. ‘Yes, brother,’ he agreed as they passed the library and then the akhada, where they worked out together with their brothers every morning. ‘That’s the whole point of those eight years of training. To make us realise the illusive seductiveness of luxury and wealth.’ 
     
    Shatrugan nodded without slowing. ‘That’s one way of putting it. Although I thought we also learned the Vedic sciences and humanities. Everything from Vedic mathematics, physics, geography, ayurveda and the study of human physiognomy, cosmology, astronomy and astrology, military strategy, self-defence and hand-to-hand combat, mastery of weapons, engineering and architecture—’ 
     
    Lakshman clapped his brother on his muscled shoulder. ‘Enough already! I was there too, you know, right beside you, learning all that you learned.’ 
     
    ‘I was just trying to point out that after all those years of study and training, it seems so strange to be here again.’ Shatrugan stopped suddenly, turning to Lakshman, a strange expression darkening his features. ‘Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be a free-archer?’ 
     
    Lakshman almost choked on his surprised laughter. ‘What? You mean a mercenary? Like a wandering bow-for-hire?’ 
     
    ‘Or a sword-for-hire,’ Shatrugan mused thoughtfully. He looked up at the ornately carved ceiling painted with a fresco depicting the deva of storms, Indra. ‘Sometimes I feel like maybe I was born in the wrong age. Like if I was born a thousand years earlier, I would have been out there battling