Read RAMAYANA SERIES Part 4_KING OF DHARMA for Free Online

started writing my Ramayana Series®, it’s quite likely that no publisher will want to even look at the manuscripts, let alone publish them. It’s equally possible that I won’t live long enough to finish telling all the stories, or even most of them. But what the hey, I’m a 45-year old, balding, greying, paunchy father to a teenage daughter and an adult son, husband to a schoolteacher wife, care-giver to an adorable but stubborn basset hound, I live and work surrounded by books, family, some filmed entertainment and a few good friends, and that’s pretty much it for me. A simple life, almost boring by Mumbai/Bombay standards or any standard for that matter. So at the least, at the very very least, I can afford to dream big, and I’m damn well going to do so. 

    I have no idea whether or not I’ll succeed, and whether you will feel at the end it was all worth it. But I’m damn well going to give it an epic try. 

    I couldn’t think of a better way to spend this lifetime.

    And you’re warmly invited to join me for the ride.

    Chariots don’t have seatbelts (neither do trains, curiously). So you’re just going to have to hold on to my shoulder if you need some support. I’ll try to coax the team to riding gentle, but at times we will have to ride fast and furious. And there may be bumps. And dips. And obstacles. 

    But at least we’ll ride them together. And the journey is an amazing one. 

    That much, I can promise you. 

    Ashok K. Banker
    25 November 2009
    Andheri, Mumbai

SAMAPTAM

Raghupati .
    Through the haze of smoke from the burning towers of Lanka, dimly glimpsed. Upon that battlefield, carelessly littered with the corpses of friends and foes alike, he stood, grieving. For even in victory had he lost so much; such were the bitter fruits of war. The shouts of his jubilant soldiers rang out all round him, yet to his ears they were overwhelmed by the remembered cries of anguish and torment of those that had fallen upon this field. Vanars, bears, rakshasas…it mattered not if they were his enemy or his ally. All who had died had died for him, one way or another. That was all that mattered. All this, this brutal hacking of limbs and sundering of bones, this mad dance of soldiers, this epic bloodshed, this immense decimation of life, was on his command, and therefore, on his conscience.
    Raghava .
    He walked the battlefield, taking stock of the fallen. All these lives cut short, some in their prime, all before their time. All these…so many, too many…brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, blood-kith and blood-kin. His siblings-at-arms. For no less were these fallen united to him than were his own brothers back home, Bharat and Shatrugan. No less were they related to him by blood than Lakshman himself, partner in all his travails and exile, the shoulder that stood beside his shoulder through thick and thin. So what if these vanars and bears and rakshasas had not been born of the same mother as he, or of the same father, or even of the same species? Born apart, they had come together to die today for him, and in dying, bonded with him in the eternal brotherhood of blood. These mangled and broken bodies had been living, hoping, longing, loving creatures, with homes and families of their own, which they had left, to dedicate themselves to his cause, to travel long yojanas to this foreign land across a hostile sea, and now this alien soil was soaked through with their honest blood. And this blood was upon his conscience.
    Raja.
    Now, he would return to his homeland, proud and triumphant, lauded in victory, to be crowned king of Ayodhya. No more a prince in exile, or at war. A king in name and deed and title. His name added to the long list of Suryavansha Ikshwakus, his portrait hung beside those others in the hall of ancestors, his statue carved and polished and raised in the public avenues and places of honour, his name given to a thousand thousand newborns whose mothers would pray for them to be as Rama