The Ramayana by Ramesh Menon Read Free Book Online Page A

more.
    â€œShe lives a yojana and a half from here, and drinks the blood of any creature that ventures into this jungle. Her son has grown up and left her. She lives alone, in torment under these trees, baying the moon through chinks in the awning of leaves, and waiting for her savior to come to deliver her.
    â€œRama, the prophesy is that you will free Tataka from her curse. Don’t balk at killing her because she is a woman. She is wretched and evil, and you must rid this jungle of her.”
    Rama bowed before Viswamitra and, smiling sweetly, said, “When my father sent us out with you, he told us, ‘Go with him, and obey him in all things as you would obey me.’ Muni, I never disobey my father.”
    Rama flung back his handsome head, black locks brushing his shoulders; raising his bow, he pulled on its string so that the jungle echoed with the virile twanging. A short way before them was a small hillock that thrust itself out from the surrounding entwinement of trees; from here, Viswamitra and the princes heard a puzzled roar. Tataka was amazed that anyone dared enter her forest and announce themselves so foolishly.
    â€œAaaaoough?” she roared like a surprised tigress, only louder. She loomed over the hill to see who the fool was. Her face was masked in mud, slime, dried blood, and worse. Her crimson eyes were glazed, her lips drawn back from her fangs in a snarl. Her hair was caked into braids of filth; her hands were raised in threatening claws. Her savage features blotted out a good piece of the sky, and she was not much smaller herself than the hillock she straddled.
    When she saw them, she roared louder. She spoke no words any more, not even to herself, but only made vile noises. She clawed up fistfuls of earth and stones, and flung them down at Viswamitra and the princes. She did a demented dance on her hill, hoping to frighten them into running from her, so she could have the pleasure of chasing them before she caught and ate them. They were just three puny men; that much she could see, even with her faded vision.
    But the oldest of the three raised his hands and chanted a mantra that pierced her black heart like an astra of fire. She roared louder still, and hefted a man-sized boulder to hurl down on them. But then the young one who was dark as a blue lotus raised his bow. With an arrow fiercer than a rishi’s curse, he cut her arm off at the elbow. The boulder fell on her own feet and how she screamed, her great body shuddering. The other fair young warrior strung his bow. Playfully, he cut off her nose and her ears, so black blood spurted from her face. Howling like a storm, she vanished before they could hurt her any more. She had made herself invisible with maya.
    They still heard her raging beyond the crest of the hill, and more rocks and stones came raining down on them as they climbed the slope. But as if she knew her time had come, the fight had gone out of Tataka. Rama and Lakshmana paused halfway up the hillock. They pulled at their bowstrings again, so the rakshasi’s screams were drowned and the earth below them shook. Suddenly Tataka’s screams stopped. She was stricken with a terror she had not felt for an age. She had fainted with that fear and with the pain of her severed parts. Her sorcery grew weak and they saw her again.
    But up she leaped. Hadn’t she drunk the blood of a hundred young fools like these? She pulled up a tree with her good hand and came lumbering over the hilltop. She loomed over them, screeching raw abuse. But Rama waited with an arrow fitted to his bow and the string drawn to his ear. As she plunged at them, he dropped onto a knee and shot her through her heart. With a sigh, she fell; like a strange avalanche, she rolled down the hill until she came to rest at Viswamitra’s feet. They saw her rakshasi’s form had changed in death. She was beautiful again and had a smile of pure release upon her face.
    There was a flash of light