Hari Om.
Let us begin the sixty first sarga of the ayOdhyA kAnDam by offering our prostrations at the lotus feet of SrIrAma and our sathguru.
Upon listening to the view points of the council of ministers which were varied in articulation but were unanimous in emphasizing the need to have a leader for ayOdhyA in that critical time to uphold governance, sage vasisTha immediately ordered the return of prince bharata from the kingdom of kEkaya. He immediately dispatched emissaries along with expensive and appropriate gifts and with strict instruction to not tell bharata about the goings on at ayOdhyA. The committed emissaries tirelessly traveled crossing rivers, hills, valleys and cities and entered kEkaya. mahaRshi vAlmIki offers quite a peek into the geography of uttarApada (northern region) as he describes in detail the trail of the emissaries. Onwards…
The night when the emissaries were reaching kEkaya, prince bharata saw ominous visions in his sleep. As the unplesant dreams showed up in the morning, bharata woke up quite disturbed that morning. Grasping that he is disturbed his friends tried to engage him in various conversations and divert his mind from something that was apparently troubling him. They sang and danced, enacted and entreated in various ways to lighten the heart of bharata and make him cheerful but bharata was not delighted by any of these earnest efforts undertaken by his friends and well wishers. One of those raconteurs took the initiative and asked bharata why he was not enjoying the company and the acts of the friends to cheer him up. Replying to him bharata detailed the reason for hisoverwhelming desolation –
“In the morning I saw a dream in which I saw my pale looking father with unkempt hair having fallen down into a pool of cow dung from the top of a mountain. His body was smeared with the filth and he came up and was drinking oil and eating rice along with sesame seeds and breaking into an occasional laughter and falling back into the pool. I further saw a number of disturbing scenes in that dream which do not bode well – the oceans dried up, the moon fallen from the skies, broken tusk of a royal elephant, sudden quenching of a raging fire, the earth split open, trees dried up, mountains engulfed with smoke. I saw my father clad in back clothes sitting on an iron chair and with black clad women laughing at him. Then I saw my father smeared in red paste hurrying off to the southern direction in a chariot yoked with donkeys. And finally an ugly looking ogress clad in red was laughing at him and dragging him away.
This frightening nightmare last night has disturbed my tranquility immensely. Either me, or rAma or the king or lakshmaNa is sure to die. One who is seen in a dream riding a chariot yoked to donkeys is sure to be spotted on his funeral pyre soon. For this reason I am overwhelmed with desolation and am not able to respond to your acts favorably. My throat goes dry and I lose mental peace recollecting the terrible dream. There are no reasons I see to be afraid, yet I worry, my voice is trembling, my looks have withered and I have low self esteem.
The graphical unprecedented scenes that I witnessed in the dream with respect to the king leave me worried and grip my heart with unsurmountable fear.
Here we conclude the sixty first sarga of the ayOdhyA kAnDam of SrImath vAlmiKi rAmAyaNam and humbly offer it at the lotus feet of SrIrAma. Hari: Om!
jAi SrIrAma.
Click on the book for word by word meaning from IITK website
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Next: 2.70. bharata homebound
Previous: 2.68. Emissaries on a mission
rAmabhaktisAmrAjyam 