Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Sundara · 36 of 50
36. The tail and the fire
Sundara (सुन्दर)
Getting back requires that the city know he was there, which is a strategic choice and a character's. He lets himself be seen. He wrecks a little of the pride of the grove's edge. He is captured, and he submits to the capture because a captured spy can still talk. The councillors debate killing him. Vibhīṣaṇa, Rāvaṇa's brother, says a messenger is not killed. The punishment chosen instead is the tail. Cloth, oil, fire. The page says the tail is set alight. It does not describe the burning.
Fire is a mistake when the captive is the wind's son and the city is flammable. He grows. He goes from roof to roof. Laṅkā burns. He is careful, in the poem, of the grove where Sītā sits, and the care is the difference between a rampage and a message. The page says the city was set alight. It does not describe how a fire is built or fed. At dawn the splendour he walked through is smoke, and he is at the shore again, suddenly afraid that the fire he carried may have killed the woman he came to find.
He returns to the grove, sees her alive, and only then leaves across the sea. The Sundara-kāṇḍa's shape is this scruple. Power, twice, stops to check on one person. A reader who remembers only the burning has missed the two returns to the tree.
नेपालीमा
फर्कनका लागि सहरले उनी आएको थाहा पाउनुपर्थ्यो। उनी समातिए। विभीषणले भने, दूत मारिँदैन। दण्ड पुच्छरमा कपडा, तेल र आगो लगाउने ठहरियो। यो पृष्ठले पुच्छर बालियो भन्छ। बाल्ने तरिका लेख्दैन। उनी छत-छत गए। लङ्का जल्यो। उपवन जोगाए। यो पृष्ठले सहर जल्यो भन्छ। आगो बनाउने तरिका लेख्दैन। बिहान उनलाई डर लाग्यो, आगोले सीतालाई मारेको हो कि। उपवनमा जीवित देखेपछि मात्र समुद्र तरे। शक्ति दुई पटक एउटै मान्छे हेर्न रोकिन्छ।