Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Ayodhyā · 18 of 50
18. Nandigrāma
Ayodhyā (अयोध्या)
Bharata keeps the vow as hard as Rāma keeps his. He does not move into the palace. He lives at Nandigrāma, governs in the sandals' name, and waits. The wait is the kāṇḍa's real ending. A kingdom can be held by someone who does not want it, for someone who will not take it yet. Dharma, in Ayodhyā, is not a feeling. It is a regency with a date on it.
The ministers learn to brief a prince who will not sit where they expect. The people learn that the king is in a forest and the throne is a pair of shoes and the arrangement is, against all sense, working. Kaikeyī lives in the city she damaged. The poem does not give her a conversion scene. It gives her a son who honors his brother by refusing her gift, every day, for fourteen years.
This is nearly the end of the Ayodhyā-kāṇḍa. One visit, to Atri's hermitage, closes it. The story of a stolen throne has become the story of a throne nobody will steal. The forest, from here, is no longer the punishment the city is looking at. It is a place with its own dangers, and the city is not watching.
नेपालीमा
रामले जति कडाइले वचन राख्नुभयो, भरतले पनि त्यति नै राखे। दरबारमा बसेनन्। नन्दिग्राममा खराउका नाममा शासन गरे। धर्म भावना होइन। मितिसहितको राजप्रतिनिधित्व हो। कविताले कैकेयीलाई रूपान्तरणको दृश्य दिँदैन। चौध वर्षसम्म दिनहुँ उनको उपहार अस्वीकार गरेर दाजुको सम्मान गर्ने छोरा दिन्छ। अयोध्याकाण्ड यहीँ सकिन लाग्छ। अत्रिको आश्रमको भेटले यसलाई टुङ्ग्याउँछ। चोरिएको सिंहासनको कथा कसैले नचोर्ने सिंहासनको कथा भयो।