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Rama had never seen the sea before. He'd grown in faraway Ayodhya, in the kingdom of Kosala, that had no exit to the sea. Later, during their exile, he'd crossed plains, mountains, and jungles, but the largest bodies of water he'd come across had been rivers. As they started making their way southwards, Lakshman had once asked how much farther south were they planning to go. The terms of their exile hadn't been clear in that regard. "As far as we can," Rama replied. "Maybe we'll reach the end of Bharatavarsha and find the sea," Sita added, trying to infuse a sense of adventure to a journey that none of them had wanted. Rama smiled at her fondly, "Maybe."
Back then the prospect seemed nice – to take a walk on a golden beach, leaving footprints in the sand and watching the gentle ebb and flow of the tides – but as with everything else, there was no joy in it without Sita.
The sight of the sea, in all its unimaginable vastness, only filled him with a terrible sense of helplessness. The vanaras, who had also never seen it, trembled in fear and despair when they reached the shore. "We've reached the edge of the world!" they cried. Rama knew from his lessons at Rishi Vasishtha’s gurukula that such thing was ridiculous, the world didn't have an edge. But it could may as well had been true. It seemed they had reached the end of their search, without having found Lanka, and Sita.
Then, an old vulture called Sampati heard them mention his brother - the valiant Jatayu who'd been mortally wounded trying to save Sita, but lived long enough to point the direction she'd been taken - and offered to help. His atrophied wings couldn't lift him up anymore, but with his sharp eyesight, he looked beyond the horizon and at the distance he saw an island, and in that island, a golden city: Lanka. "If I still could, I would go there myself and find her for you," he told Rama. "But as you see, I cannot fly." And neither can bears or monkeys, Rama thought dejected.
He'd been wrong, though. As it turned out, there was one monkey that could. A monkey that could do the impossible, but couldn't remember his greatness until it was needed the most. When everything seemed lost, Hanuman did a miracle. He increased his size, becoming bigger and bigger until he towered like a mountain, his head scraping the clouds. Then, with a great leap that shook the earth, he rose to the sky, casting his large shadow over the entire beach bellow, and flew off towards Lanka, carrying all of Rama's hopes with him.
~•~•~•~•~
A full day passed without Hanuman returning, and Rama was growing more and more anxious. All his life he'd believed himself to be a very patient man, but this ordeal was greatly testing his limits. He sat by the shore, staring into the distant line where the ocean met the sky. He longed for Sampati's vision, to see beyond that limit, and know what had come of his vanara friend.
More than ever, his thoughts kept returning to his wife. He hadn't known - he'd thought he did, but truly he hadn't - just how much he loved her. How much better her presence made his whole existence. In the hardest of times, she'd given him a reason to laugh, to hope, to dream. She turned an exile that should have been the worst years of his life, into some of the best. And now she was gone, and he felt so utterly lost and lonely. And guilty as well, for having failed to protect her, for having brought her with him in the first place. Although he knew well that he couldn’t have stopped her from following him.
Not that he hadn't tried, but she was a stubborn one. She rebuked every argument, rejected all reasoning, and stayed firm in her conviction that her place was at his side, no matter where he was. She promised she would take care of herself, not burdening him at all. And when he still argued against it, she reached the heart of the matter: “Is it that you don't want me at your side?”
No. It was exactly the opposite. He desperately wanted her at his side. The harshness and danger of the forest life didn't strike him as bad as the loneliness of it. But that wasn't a good enough reason to drag her along, like a child dragging along his favorite blanket to give him comfort. She wasn't his property, she was his responsibility. At least he knew Lakshman could defend himself, but he didn't know if he could ensure her safety out there.
"What if you get hurt? What if you get lost?" He insisted. "I'm not so delicate. Don't expect me to trip with every pebble on the way. And if I got lost, then I would find my way back to you." She locked eyes with him. "I would go through hell to find you." At that, he knew nothing would stop her from following him, because she wasn't just doing it out of duty. He realized then the deep of her love for him.
Did she know the deep of his love for her? Hard to say, since he wasn't one the show it. He was always keenly aware of their station in life, even in the forest. They were the rightful king and queen of Ayodhya, and he considered the overemotional display of romantic affection to be below their dignity. And in any case, it wasn't in his nature. He'll rather show his love through respect, through service, through protection (although he'd failed miserably at the latter).
But when he lost her, something broke inside of him, shattering his composure. He'd wept and despaired, wandering the forest crying out for his beloved like any forlorn lover. In an ironic reversal of roles, Lakshman had to ask him to remain cool-headed. Falling into desperation wouldn't get him closer to Sita.
He listened to his little brother, and focused instead on the single-minded goal of getting her back – and of slaying the trice-dammed rakshasa that had kidnapped her. He'd taken all that anguish and buried it deep within himself, but with every day that passed without her, it threatened with bursting out. He could feel it eating at his gut now, as he looked at the distant line where the ocean met the sky and waited for a sight of his vanara friend.
And sooner rather than later, he got it. First, it was a tiny spot in the sky that grew larger and larger as it approached, until he could clearly see Hanuman returning.
~•~•~•~•~
Hanuman didn't disappoint him. He'd found his wife and even managed to speak with her. And he brought her hairpin and a story known only to the couple as proof of the meeting. But all the proof Rama needed was the reverence and admiration with which he spoke of her. Nobody who had known his Sita could fail to admire her.
Hanuman told him of his Sita: sited in a garden of Ashoka trees, refusing to enjoy the luxury of her captor's palace, bullied by her guards and harassed by Ravana, but unyielding to any threat. Showing her fortitude while waiting to be rescued, growing sadder by the day, but never letting it show, and never losing hope that her Rama was coming for her. And he was. Now that he was certain that Sita was beyond the sea’s great expanse, nothing was going to stop him from reaching her.
He regretted that he didn't have anything – not even words – to give Hanuman that would demonstrate his gratitude for what he'd done for him. So he simply embraced him, like a brother. For the vanara had become as dear to him as one.
Now it came the matter of how their army would cross the sea to Lanka. Rama sat in council with Lakshman, Sugriva, Jambavan, Angad and Hanuman to discuss it. The most obvious option was to build boats, but doing so would require a lot of time and expertise that they simply didn't have. Other options were proposed – some plausible, other fantastical – but at the end Rama decided that if they couldn't find a way across the sea, then maybe the sea could make way for them. The most fantastical of options, perhaps, but he could try asking.
For several days and nights, he sat upon the beach fasting and reciting mantras, praying to Varuna, the Lord of the Oceans. But the only answer he received was the roaring of the waves. His frustration began to mount. Where before the sea seemed like an endless stretch, now he saw it as an irritating block in his path that only serve to keep him idle when he could have been battling Ravana and his army. A burning rage began to boil inside him, and at last reached the end of his patience.
He commanded Lakshman to bring him his bow and quiver, and began firing burning arrows at the sea. Those terrible ashtras caused the water to steam and boil, filling the surface with the dead carcasses of aquatic creatures. He placed one last arrow on his bow. "Varuna!" He shouted. "This arrow of mine will scorch every drop of you, until the oceans of these earth turn into barren deserts! Unless you come and face me!" He took aim, ready to shoot. "Well?!"
The sea swelled and swirled, spiralling inwards into a whirlwind, and from its midst he appeared. Lord Varuna rose from the waters with a great makara as his vahana; his skin was of a bright cerulean hue, his ornaments were made of seaweeds and pearls and seashells, and in his hands, he carried a noose and a fishing net.
"Lord Ramachandra," his voice boomed over the clashing of the waves. "Don't act rashly. From the ocean comes the salt, the fish, and the rain. If you destroy it, the whole of creation will suffer. "
Rama kept his arrow pointed at the ocean. "If you part the sea for my army to cross, then I'll have no reason to destroy it."
"The fire's nature is to burn, the wind's nature is to blow, and the nature of the ocean is to be deep and expansive and impassable. I cannot change my nature for you." Lord Varuna sounded apologetic enough to compel Rama to lower his bow with a sigh. "There is another way, however. Amidst your army, there is a vanara named Nala, rocks thrown by him into the ocean cannot sink. Have him built a bridge over me and I will hold it afloat. May victory be yours." And with that he disappeared back into the waters.
Rama called on Nala to prove Lord Varuna's words. The monkey picked up a stone and hurled it into the sea, and sure enough it floated. Small ones and big ones, every stone he touched before being thrown stayed on the surface of the water. But another problem soon became clear: although the stones didn't sink, they drifted away from each other. The army began racking their brains for a solution, when Hanuman got an idea.
He carved the name 'Rama' into one stone and handed it over to Nala. The stone stayed put, unmoved by the tide. Another stone with Rama's name was thrown into the water and it stuck to the other like a magnet to metal. Rama was impressed. "How did you know it would work?" he asked Hanuman. "Because your name has become my mantra. It was by chanting your name that I could fly over to Lanka, and overcome every hardship that I found there. It's your name that gives me peace, comfort, and clarity whenever I need it." Rama didn't know what to respond.
So it began the construction of the bridge. The bears and monkeys divided themselves into groups with different jobs assigned to them. Some scoured for stones and boulders from the nearby mountains, others carved Rama's name into them, and others passed those stones in a long chain to Nala, who hurled them into the sea. Jambavan and Sugriva organized the groups, Sampati - perched on a great rock - supervised the works, and Hanuman flew all over, doing the job of a hundred workers all by himself.
Now that they had a clear goal to work for, the troops were full of high spirits, and the sound of happy chatter was almost as loud as the ruckus of the construction. Rama saw Lakshman laugh for the first time in months as he competed with some of the bigger vanaras to see who could lift the bigger rock.
And Rama saw them work amazed by the fact that while he was doing it all for Sita, they were doing it all for him. They spoke eagerly of reaching Lanka and fighting the rakshasas to recover their Lord’s wife, and his honor. And, whenever a particularly big boulder was put in place, or whenever some difficulty in the construction was overcome, the workers would shout in unison "Jai Sri Rama."
And it wasn’t just the bears and monkeys, but also other animals who joined the efforts. Once, Rama spotted a little squirrel scurrying between the feet of the bigger workers. He would wet himself in the sea, and then roll on the sand, sticking the sand grains to his fur. Afterwards, he would run to the bridge and shake the grains off, filling the gaps between the rocks. Rama pick up the little one in his hand, and ran his fingers through his back, saying: “Thank you.”
What he had done to have these animals act so oddly against their nature, and to command such loyalty from them, he couldn’t say, but he felt immensely grateful anyway.
And as the days passed, their labor bore fruit. The great bridge began stretching towards to horizon, glistering in the sunlight like the Milky Way across the night sky. Rama worked strenuously along with the vanaras, knowing every stone, every boulder, every pebble, brought him a step closer to her.
“Bhaiya, look!” Lakshman pointed him to the horizon that he hadn’t glanced at for some time, so fixed was he on his labor. In the distance, faintly visible, was a stretch of land. Rama smiled. I’m coming Sita.