Chapter 31 — Where Is Sita?

Rain came over Kishkindha in walls of water.

From the cave outside the city, Rama watched streams race down the slopes and the paths vanish beneath leaf-mold and mud. Thunder travelled from ridge to ridge. The forests that had blazed with spring flowers were dense and dark; rivers that could be crossed on foot became violent courses of brown water.

The rains were an obstacle to marching and searching. They were also a season that made absence sharper. Rama saw cranes and other birds gathering with their mates, heard the rain on leaves where Sita should have been sheltered beside him, and remembered the monsoons of a life before exile and loss. Lakshmana stayed near him, hearing in his brother's sorrow the danger of waiting too long without action.

In Kishkindha, Sugriva had been installed, received the obligations of kingship, and entered a city newly returned to him. The season passed. When the skies cleared and the roads began to harden, Rama still had no news of Sita.

He did not say that Sugriva had forgotten. He did say that a pledge had a time within it.

“Go to him,” he told Lakshmana. “Remind him what he promised. Do not let anger take you further than the truth requires.”

Lakshmana went with anger already near the surface. He came to Kishkindha with bow in hand, and the city heard that Rama's brother stood at its gates. Fear moved quickly through the palace. Tara came out first. She did not deny the delay. She asked Lakshmana to see the difference between negligence that could be repaired and an enemy's settled contempt.

Hanuman stood with her. He had not forgotten the pact made at Rishyamukha. He told Sugriva that Rama's grief had not paused with the rains and that the king could no longer let the season explain what action must now answer.

Sugriva received Lakshmana. He did not claim that the rebuke was unfair. The kingdom's return, the rainy months, and the gathering of scattered forces had filled the interval, but none of it erased his obligation.

“I have been slow,” he said. “I will send the search.”

Orders went out through Kishkindha. Vanara leaders came from forests, mountains, riverlands, and coasts. Sugriva organized them toward the four directions, giving each party a route and a limit of time. He did not pretend the vastness of the world could be made small by command. He did what a king could do: turned loyalty and local knowledge into a deliberate search.

To Hanuman he gave special charge. Rama called Hanuman close and placed a ring in his hand.

“If you find Sita,” Rama said, “give her this. She will know it came from me.”

The ring was not a charm that would open a path by itself. It was a token of recognition, small enough to carry through danger and intimate enough to speak when Rama could not. Hanuman closed his hand around it.

The southern party set out under Angada, with Hanuman, Jambavan, the elder bear-hero, and other vanara leaders. Southward was the direction Jatayu had given before he died. It was also the direction of the sea, and the party searched through country that did not yield its secrets easily: dry plains, forests, ravines, settlements, mountain passes, and places where no one had seen a woman carried through the sky.

Their allotted month passed while they searched. In a harsh country they found the mouth of a dark cave, from which wet-winged birds emerged and drops of water fell. Hunger and the hope of water drew them in. The passage led not to an ordinary cavern but to a hidden refuge: clear pools, fruiting trees, golden dwellings, and gardens sealed away from the dry land above.

Its guardian was Swayamprabha, an ascetic woman. She told them that the wonder-worker Maya had made this underground retreat for Hema, a celestial dancer, and that when Hema left it had been entrusted to her care. Swayamprabha gave the exhausted searchers water and food, then asked why armed men had entered a place no road should have reached.

They told her about Sita, the search, and the month Sugriva had granted them. Only then did they realize how long they had been below ground: the time had passed while they searched the refuge for a way out. Swayamprabha told them that its passages could not be escaped by ordinary walking. “Close your eyes,” she said. “Do not open them until I tell you.”

They obeyed. Guided by the power of her disciplined practice, she brought them out of the hidden refuge and set them beneath open sky again. When they opened their eyes, the cave was behind them and the southern sea lay before them.

The deadline had passed.

Angada looked at the water and at the companions who had trusted him. To return empty-handed seemed to him worse than death. The party debated fasting there rather than going back to face Sugriva's anger. Hanuman argued against surrender, but no one yet had a direction. They knew only that Sita had been taken south and that every road they had tested had failed.

Above them, on a cliff scorched by sun and wind, an old vulture heard the name of Jatayu.

He came down slowly. His wings were ruined; age and loss had made flight impossible. “Who speaks of Jatayu?” he asked.

The vanaras told him. They told how Jatayu had seen Ravana seize Sita, fought to stop him, and died after naming the abductor. The old bird listened as though the story had crossed a great distance inside him.

“Jatayu was my younger brother,” he said. “I am Sampati.”

He told them of a youth shared with Jatayu, when the two had flown high toward the sun in rivalry. Jatayu had come too near its blaze. Sampati had spread his own wings over his brother and saved him, but the heat had burned those wings away. Since then he had lived grounded on the edge of the sea, learning from those who moved through the air what he himself could no longer see.

His sight, however, remained far-reaching. He had seen Ravana cross the sea with a woman who cried Rama's name. The abductor had taken her to Lanka, the island stronghold beyond the water.

At the news, the shore changed. It was still immense; the water still stood between them and Sita. But absence had acquired a place. Sampati's account, and the grief he had borne for Jatayu, gave the searchers more than comfort: it gave them a direction they could test.

As he spoke, the old vulture's lost wings began to grow again, a restoration that came with the completion of his long-appointed witness. The vanaras watched him rise, not yet over the sea but into the air he had thought forever closed to him.

Hanuman looked across the water toward Lanka. Rama's ring was still secure in his hand. The question had changed from Where is Sita? to the harder question waiting behind it: who could reach her?

No one answered it yet.