Chapter 1 — A Pair of Kraunchas

The hunter had no reason to shoot the male bird.

That morning Valmiki had walked a long way from his hermitage, and Narada’s words were still walking with him. The sage from heaven had only just departed. All morning he had sat before Valmiki and answered a single question, whether there lived anywhere in this world a steadfast man, one who knew the truth and never broke his word. There was such a man, Narada said. His name was Rama. Then he told the man’s story from beginning to end, and Valmiki listened without interrupting once. After Narada rose back into the sky, Valmiki could not sit still in his hermitage. He asked his disciple Bharadvaja to walk with him to the Tamasa River, not far from the Ganga.

On the bank of the Tamasa he stopped.

The water was shallow and clear. He could see the small stones on the riverbed, and not a trace of mud clouded the stream.

“Bharadvaja,” he said, “look at this place. The water is clear, like the heart of a good man. Set your water jar down here, and bring me my bark cloth. I will bathe right here. There is no better place to bathe along this whole river.”

Bharadvaja set the jar down at the water’s edge and handed him the cloth. Valmiki took it, though he did not step down into the river yet. With the bark cloth draped over his arm, he walked slowly along the edge of the forest. The woods were wide, and their trees shaded the riverbank far into the distance.

Near the water stood a pair of krauncha birds.

They walked side by side across the wet sand, then flew low and alighted again not far from where they had been. The male wore a crest the color of copper. He spread his wings wide before his mate and called out, and the female answered with a higher cry. They paid no heed to the old man standing beneath the trees. Valmiki did not move either, so that he would not startle them into flight.

He did not see the hunter come.

The first thing he heard was the twang of a bowstring. Then the male fell. An arrow had pierced his chest, and he thrashed on the sand, his wings still spread wide. His blood soaked the feathers around the wound and dripped onto the sand.

The female flew high, then plunged back down. She beat her wings above her mate’s body and wheeled around him, and from her throat came a long cry, once, twice, again and again. The male stopped thrashing. The female kept crying out.

Behind the bushes, the hunter stood with his bow in his hand.

Valmiki looked at the male bird, then at the female, then at the hunter. The birds had harmed no one. The female’s screaming did not cease, and Valmiki’s hand holding the bark cloth clenched at his side.

The words left his mouth before he thought of them.

O hunter,
never shall you win prosperity
through all the everlasting years,
for from a pair of kraunchas in love
you slew the one.

Valmiki stood where he was for a long time. The female had settled beside her mate’s body and was calling softly now, with longer pauses between her cries.

He repeated his own words inside his head. He had not meant to pronounce a curse in such a way. He had only seen a bird die and heard a bird weep. Yet the words that had just come out did not sound like ordinary speech. Their rhythm was even in every part, and their stresses fell in the same places. He repeated them once more, counting on his fingers.

“What did I just utter?” he said, half to himself.

Bharadvaja stepped closer.

“Listen,” Valmiki said. “Those words were arranged in lines of equal length, with the same cadence. They can be sung, and they can be accompanied by plucked strings.” He paused, then looked once more at the female bird. “Those words were born of shoka, of grief. Let them be called shloka.”

“Let it be so, Master,” Bharadvaja replied, and smiled.

Valmiki returned to the river. He tied the bark cloth around his waist, waded into the water, and immersed himself according to the rule. Rising again, he murmured the prayers in a low voice. With both palms cupped together he scooped up water and poured it back into the river for the gods and for the spirits of the ancestors. Then he climbed the bank and walked home. Bharadvaja followed behind him, carrying on his shoulder the jar he had filled to the brim with the water of the Tamasa.

All the way back Valmiki said nothing. Now and then he stopped, raised one hand, and lowered it again.

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At the hermitage, Valmiki sat and spoke with his disciples of ordinary things, of water, of firewood, of who would tend the fire that night. His disciples answered and he nodded, yet his eyes did not follow their faces. Inside his head those lines kept turning over, and the cry of the female bird kept sounding behind them.

Then the light in the hermitage courtyard changed.

A guest stood there. His body shone, and he had four faces, each turned toward one of the four quarters. Valmiki’s disciples stepped back without a sound.

Valmiki rose quickly. He recognized the guest. Brahma, the Grandfather, creator of all beings, had come to his own hermitage.

Valmiki could find no words. He stood with his head bowed. Then he remembered what a host must do. He brought water and washed his guest’s feet, offered the tokens of honor, and prepared the finest seat the hermitage possessed.

Brahma sat down. He asked after Valmiki’s welfare, then gestured for him to sit before him.

Valmiki sat. The creator of the world was right before his eyes, an arm’s length away. Yet his mind did not stay in that room. His thoughts returned to the bank of the Tamasa, to the wet sand and the wings still spread wide.

What sin did that man commit, he thought. He killed a singing bird for no reason at all.

And without realizing it, his lips began to murmur those lines again, for the female bird left behind.

Brahma smiled.

“The verse you spoke will be known throughout the world,” he said. “Do not doubt it. Those words came from your mouth because I willed it so.”

Valmiki raised his face.

“Now,” Brahma said, “tell the whole story of Rama in verse such as that. You have heard it from Narada. Tell everything you know of Rama, of Lakshmana, of the princess of Videha, and of the rakshasas. Whatever you do not know, whatever even Narada does not know, shall be laid open to you. Not a single word in your poem shall be false.”

He paused a breath, and all four of his faces looked upon Valmiki together.

“So long as the mountains stand and the seas remain upon the earth, the story of the Ramayana shall circulate among mankind. And so long as that story is told, you shall dwell in this world and in mine.”

Having spoken thus, Brahma was no longer there. The seat stood empty.

Valmiki’s disciples looked at one another. Then one of them, in a quiet voice, began to chant the lines they had heard from their master by the river. The others joined in. They chanted them once, then once again, and with each repetition the lines sounded fuller and more piercing.

“Four quarters of equal measure,” one of them said, half in a whisper. “It is a shloka. And our master will tell the whole Ramayana in this rhythm.”

Valmiki did not answer. He took water, rinsed his mouth, and spread kusha grass on the floor with its tips pointing east. He sat down upon it, folded his hands together, and closed his eyes.