The songs of Lava and Kusha
Episode 20 of 20 in Ramayana: Valmiki's story, told gently.
Narrated with an AI voice.
- Reading time
- 6 min
- Listening time
- 9 min
- By
- DharmikStudio Originals
- Narration
- AI voice
Read along
Namaste. This is our last sitting together in this series, so let us take a slow breath first. In. And out.
Last time Rama came home. Bharata placed the padukas back on his feet, and Rama was crowned in Ayodhya with Sita beside him. For many families, that is where the Ramayana ends, in joy.
Valmiki's poem has one more part, the **Uttara Kanda**, the later book. Before we open it, I want to say two things honestly. First, many scholars think that much of the Uttara Kanda was added to the poem later, by other hands. Second, some of the most loved retellings, like Goswami Tulsidas's **Ramcharitmanas**, do not tell the part of the story we are about to hear. So if your family's Ramayana ends at the coronation, you are in very good company.
We tell it tonight because it belongs to Valmiki's tradition, and because it brings our story back to where it began. We will tell it briefly, and with care.
**
The years of Rama's reign are peaceful. The sage **Agastya** visits the court and tells many old stories. One of them children love. When Hanuman was a baby, Agastya says, he saw the rising Sun and thought it was a ripe fruit, and leapt up into the sky to pick it. The gods, alarmed and amused, blessed him with strength, and also with a gentle forgetting of his own power, until someone would remind him. That is why, long ago on the seashore, Jambavan had to remind Hanuman of who he was.
**
Now comes the part that is hard to hear.
Sita is expecting a child. She tells Rama she would like to visit the ashrams of the sages by the Ganga. Around the same time, Rama learns that some people in the city are speaking doubtfully about Sita, because she had lived in Lanka.
Rama knows Sita is pure. He has never doubted it. But he is a king, and he believes a king must keep the trust of every one of his people. Torn between his duty as he sees it and his love, he makes a decision that breaks his own heart. He asks **Lakshmana** to take Sita across the Ganga to the forest near Valmiki's ashram, and to leave her there.
Lakshmana does it, weeping. On the far bank he tells her. Sita's grief is deep. But her message for Rama, as Valmiki gives it, is full of care. Look after the people as you look after your own brothers, she says. Guard your good name. My concern is for you.
**
This is the part of the Ramayana many people find hardest. For centuries, people have asked whether Rama did right. Poets have asked it. Devotees have asked it. Your grandmother may have asked it. Asking that question is not a lack of faith. Often it is a form of love, for Sita, and for Rama too. We will not answer it for you tonight. We will only stay close to Sita.
**
Valmiki's students find a young woman crying by the river and run to their teacher. **Valmiki** comes himself. He knows who she is. He tells her, gently, that she is welcome, that she is like a daughter to him, and that the women of the ashram will care for her. And so Sita lives in Valmiki's ashram, among the trees and the sound of the river.
There, twin boys are born to her. Valmiki names them **Lava** and **Kusha**. They grow up in the forest, strong and bright, and their teacher is the poet himself.
And now you will remember our very first episode. The grieving poet by the Tamasa river, the birds, the first shloka, and Brahma's blessing to tell the story of Rama. Valmiki finished his poem. And the first people he taught it to were these two boys. Lava and Kusha learn the Ramayana by heart, verse by verse, to be sung with the veena, not knowing that it is the story of their own mother and father.
**
In Ayodhya, Rama performs a great yajna, the **Ashvamedha**. A king was expected to have his queen beside him at such a rite. Rama does not marry again. Instead he has an image of Sita made in gold, and he places it beside him. Of all the details in the Uttara Kanda, many devotees hold on to this one. Rama was faithful to Sita all his life.
Valmiki comes to the yajna with his two students. He tells them to sing the Ramayana wherever people gather. So the boys sing, in the streets and then in Rama's own court. Everyone is spellbound. Rama orders that the boys be given gold for their singing. They politely refuse. We live in the forest on fruits and roots, they say. What would we do with gold? Rama asks who made this poem. Our teacher, the sage Valmiki, they answer. Rama listens, day after day, and slowly he understands who these boys are.
**
Rama sends a message to Valmiki. If Sita is pure, let her come here and affirm it before everyone.
Valmiki brings Sita into the assembly. The poet himself speaks for her. I have never spoken an untruth, he says, and I tell you Sita is without fault. Rama answers that he knows it. He says the twins are his sons.
Then Sita stands with folded hands, looking down at the earth. She speaks softly. If I have never thought of anyone but Rama, she says, may the Earth, my mother, give me a place. You will remember that she was found in a furrow of the earth, in Mithila, when she was a baby. She is going home.
The Earth opens gently. **Bhudevi**, the goddess of the Earth, rises on a beautiful throne, takes Sita in her arms, and seats her beside her. And Sita goes back into the earth she came from, as flowers fall from the sky.
Rama's grief is very great. Valmiki does not hide it.
**
Rama rules for many more years, with his sons beside him. And when his time on earth is complete, Valmiki tells us, Rama walks into the waters of the **Sarayu**, with the people of Ayodhya who wish to go with him, and returns to his own abode.
**
So let us gather, not just today's story, but all twenty sittings. A poet heard two birds by a river and found a verse. A prince walked out of his father's city smiling. A brother ruled with sandals on the throne. A friend leapt across the sea. A refuge was promised to anyone who asks even once. A king was honoured at the end by the one who defeated him. And a mother taught her sons, without knowing it, their own story, which they sang back to the world.
**One thing to take with you.** Lava and Kusha learned this story by heart and sang it for others. Choose one small part of the Ramayana that stayed with you in these episodes, and tell it this week to someone younger than you. That is how this story has lived for so long.
Thank you for sitting with us through all twenty episodes. May the story of Rama and Sita stay with you and your family.
**Credits (read out):** Written by the DharmikStudio team from the Valmiki Ramayana, Uttara Kanda and Bala Kanda, told in brief, with a note on scholarly views and on the Ramcharitmanas. Narrated with an AI voice. If you hear a mistake, please use "Report a mistake" on this episode.