Chapter 17 — Farewell to Ayodhya

The palace filled with farewells before the city had understood that the departure could not be stopped. What had been prepared for consecration now held the sound of weeping, the scrape of bark cloth, and horses waiting at the gate.

Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana put on the rough garments of forest-dwellers. Sita, who had never needed to fasten bark cloth, stood uncertainly with it in her hands until Rama tied it over her fine dress. The sight broke something in the people gathered there. Dasharatha protested that exile was enough; Sita should not be made to wear it. But the demand had already stripped the day of every ordinary measure.

Sumitra, Lakshmana's birth mother, gave him a last instruction. Rama, she told him, was to be his father; Sita, his mother; the forest, Ayodhya. He was to go without fear and keep close watch over them.

Her words belong to a world in which elders carry a profound claim on the care and respect of younger kin. Within that family ethic, an elder brother's wife can be honored with the standing of a mother. Sumitra was not confusing relationships; she was giving Lakshmana a rule for exile. He was to serve Rama and Sita with the reverence and vigilance due to parents, while treating the unfamiliar forest as the place where that duty must now be lived.

Sumantra, the king's counsellor and charioteer, brought the chariot. Sita climbed in first. Rama and Lakshmana followed, with their weapons placed in the carriage. When the horses moved, Ayodhya moved after them.

Citizens ran beside the wheels and behind them. They asked Sumantra to slow down so that they might look once more at Rama's face. Dasharatha and Kausalya came after the chariot on foot, calling to Rama. Between the king's command to stop and Rama's command to go, Sumantra was torn: the father who had ordered the exile was now crying out against its departure, while the son who obeyed the order asked that it be carried through. Rama asked him to drive on, and the chariot gathered speed.

The people followed beyond the city. At the bank of the Tamasa, a small river, the travelers stopped for the night. The citizens lay down nearby, exhausted by grief and the road. Rama saw them sleeping and decided that their devotion must not become a longer suffering. Before dawn, he asked Sumantra to turn the chariot so that the tracks would confuse those who came after. When the citizens woke, they searched until the trail failed and then returned to a city that no longer felt like their own.

The journey went on through Kosala. At Shringaverapura, on the Ganga, they were met by Guha, ruler of the Nishadas. The Nishadas were a community of the river and forest country; Guha meets Rama not as a nameless boatman but as a leader and host. He had food, beds, and service prepared, but Rama accepted only what his exile allowed. Lakshmana kept watch through the night while Guha, troubled by the sight of the travelers exposed on the ground, kept him company. Beneath the trees, the ruler of the river settlement watched the prince of Ayodhya sleep on grass.

At dawn, Rama asked for a boat. Sita prayed to the Ganga for the safe end of the exile and promised offerings on their return. The broad river carried the first light in broken gold; it was both a great waterway and a sacred presence. When the boat reached the far bank, the three had crossed out of the realm of the court.

Sumantra could not go farther. Rama sent him back to Dasharatha with words of reverence and consolation that could not console. The three continued to the hermitage of Bharadvaja, a sage whose forest dwelling was a place of discipline, learning, and hospitality. On his advice they made for Chitrakuta. There, beside the Mandakini river, Lakshmana built a leaf-thatched shelter. For the first time, the travelers did not merely pass through the forest: they made a home within it, however temporary and painful that home would be.