Chapter 19 — Bharata

Bharata dreamed of disaster before the messengers arrived.

He saw his father fallen from royal dignity and images of ruin that disturbed him even after waking. The dream did not explain what had happened, but it left him uneasy. When Dasharatha's envoys reached Kekaya and asked him to come home quickly, he set out with Shatrughna.

Ayodhya told him something was wrong before anyone spoke. Its streets were quiet; flower-strewn roads and festival preparations had lost their purpose. The city that had prepared itself for Rama's installation seemed to have withdrawn into itself. Bharata looked for his father, for Rama, for the familiar movement of the palace, and found none of it.

Kaikeyi received him. She told him that Dasharatha was dead. Then she told him what had followed: she had claimed the two promises, Rama had gone into exile for fourteen years, and the kingdom had been offered to Bharata.

The offered kingdom did not appear to Bharata as good fortune. He recoiled from it. He had been away in Kekaya; he had not asked for the demand, known of it, or helped bring it about. His first grief for his father was joined at once to grief and anger for Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana.

He turned on Kaikeyi with the full force of that anger. What wrong, he asked, had Dasharatha done her? What wrong had Rama done, he whose conduct had been so steadfast? She had brought death upon her husband, sent Rama away in bark cloth, wounded Kausalya and Sumitra, and placed a stain upon Bharata himself. He told her that he would not speak with her as though nothing had happened, and he called the kingdom she had obtained a calamity rather than a gift.

These are harsh words, spoken by a son to his mother in shock and mourning. Their violence stood. Bharata does not soften the deed in order to preserve his inheritance; he rejects the inheritance because of the deed. Yet his denunciation does not prove that he had wished or planned the outcome. It marks his separation from it.

Kausalya saw him through the wound that had been made in her house. At first she asked whether he had returned for the kingdom. Bharata answered that he had not. He grieved before her and swore that he had neither approved nor known of Rama's exile. He called down upon himself the moral burden of grave wrongs if he had consented to it. The protest is desperate because Kausalya's trust matters to him: Rama is her son, but Bharata calls her his elder mother as well.

Kausalya listened. She saw that he was collapsing under grief, not claiming victory. She drew him close and recognized that he had not abandoned what he owed to Rama. In that embrace the household did not become whole again, but the false division Kaikeyi's demand might have made between the brothers was refused.

Then came the rites for Dasharatha. In the royal and familial order of that world, a son bears a central responsibility for the dead parent's rites; with Rama absent, Bharata performs the obligations that must be done. He mourns over his father's body, directs the funeral ceremonies with Vashishta and the officiants, and remains through the days of mourning. This does not displace Rama as the eldest son. It is the duty that cannot be postponed while Rama remains in the forest.

After the mourning interval, the ministers and elders urged Bharata to accept installation. A kingdom could not remain without a ruler, they said. Bharata agreed that Ayodhya needed care; he did not agree that it should be his as a prize.

Rama was the elder brother and the one whom the city had expected to receive the heir's office. Bharata said that he would go to the forest, seek him out, and bring him back. Only then could the broken order of the family and kingdom be faced openly.

The expedition that left Ayodhya was large: mothers, elders, priests, counsellors, citizens, and an army travelled with Bharata. Chariots and horses raised dust on roads that had lately carried only mourning. From a distance it could look like an army going to compel a rival. Bharata's purpose was the opposite. He was going to ask Rama to take back what had been taken from him.