Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Ayodhyā · 12 of 50
12. Rāma accepts
Ayodhyā (अयोध्या)
Rāma is summoned. He comes expecting a blessing and finds a father who cannot look at him. Kaikeyī says the thing the king cannot say. The forest, fourteen years, Bharata's consecration, and the king's honor depending on Rāma's obedience. Rāma's answer is immediate. He will go. The immediacy is the character Nārada described at the start, and it is also the wound. He does not bargain. A reader who wants him to bargain is reading a different poem.
He goes to Kausalyā. She breaks, and then she does what the poem considers the harder motherhood. She blesses the going. She would rather have a son who keeps a father's word than a son who keeps her beside him by breaking it. The sentence costs her everything she waited for. She says it anyway.
Through the apartments the news moves slower than Rāma does. He is already preparing the bark, already talking of the forest as a duty he knows how to do. The city has not caught up. When it catches up, the consecration crowd becomes a mourning crowd in the same streets, with the same garlands.
नेपालीमा
रामलाई बोलाइयो। उहाँ आशीर्वादको आशामा आउनुभयो, र आफूलाई हेर्न नसक्ने बाबु भेट्नुभयो। राजाले भन्न नसकेको कुरा कैकेयीले भनिन्। उहाँको उत्तर तुरुन्तै आयो: म जान्छु। त्यो तुरुन्तपन नै नारदले भनेको चरित्र हो, र घाउ पनि। उहाँले मोलतोल गर्नुभएन। उहाँ कौसल्याकहाँ जानुभयो। आमा भाँचिइन्, अनि जाने कुरामा आशीर्वाद दिइन्। बुबाको वचन राख्ने छोरा, आमाको छेउमा बस्न वचन तोड्ने छोराभन्दा उनलाई प्यारो थियो। यो वाक्यले उनले पर्खेको सबै गुमाइदियो। तैपनि उनले त्यो भनिन्।