Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Kiṣkindhā · 29 of 50
29. The rains
Kiṣkindhā (किष्किन्धा)
The monsoon is a law of the search. Armies do not move in it. Rāma accepts the season and then, as the weeks go on and the sky clears and Sugrīva still does not come, the acceptance thins. He is a husband on a mountain, and the ally who swore to search is king again, and kingship has wine and women and a court that finds reasons to wait. Lakṣmaṇa's anger arrives before Rāma's. He goes into Kiṣkindhā ready to say unforgivable things.
Tārā meets him and cools the entrance. Sugrīva, faced with the brother and with his own promise, is ashamed in the way of a man who meant it and forgot. He comes out. The alliance is repaired without a second killing, which is a mercy the Vālin episode did not earn and this one just barely does. Orders go out. The monkey hosts gather. The known world is divided into directions.
The rains are the poem's study of a good nature with a bad memory. Sugrīva is not Duryodhana. He is a friend who sank into a recovered pleasure. The difference matters, and it is not an excuse. Rāma needed the search more than he needed a philosophical sympathy for why people delay. Lakṣmaṇa is the one who remembers that.
नेपालीमा
वर्षामा सेना हिँड्दैन, र राम त्यो ऋतु स्वीकार गर्नुहुन्छ। आकाश खुलेपछि पनि सुग्रीव आएनन्। लक्ष्मण किष्किन्धा पसे, रिस लिएर। ताराले शान्त पारिन्। सुग्रीव लाजले निस्के। दोस्रो हत्याबिना नै गठबन्धन मर्मत भयो। बानर सेना जम्मा भयो, र संसार दिशाहरूमा बाँडियो। सुग्रीव दुर्योधन होइनन्। फर्केको सुखमा डुबेका साथी हुन्। यो फरक महत्त्वपूर्ण छ, तर सफाइ होइन।