Chitrakuta and a father's grief
Episode 7 of 20 in Ramayana: Valmiki's story, told gently.
Narrated with an AI voice.
- Reading time
- 7 min
- Listening time
- 9 min
- By
- DharmikStudio Originals
- Narration
- AI voice
Read along
Namaste. Let us sit together again.
Last time, Rama heard that he must leave Ayodhya, and he left without a word of complaint. Sita and Lakshmana walked with him. Guha, the Nishada king, gave them shelter, and the three crossed the Ganga. Now, for the first time, they are truly on their own.
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On the far bank of the Ganga, the forest began. Lakshmana walked in front. Sita walked in the middle. Rama walked behind, so that she was safe on both sides. That first night they slept under a great tree, and Rama, who had never slept outside a palace, talked late into the night with his brother. He worried about his father. He worried about his mother. He said, "Lakshmana, go back tomorrow. Someone must look after them." And Lakshmana said, "Without you, I would not be happy even in heaven." Rama did not ask again.
The next day they walked towards the place where the Ganga meets the **Yamuna**. We call it **Prayag** today. From far away they saw smoke rising from a sacrificial fire, and Rama said, "There must be a sage living there."
It was the ashram of **Bharadvaja**, one of the great rishis. He welcomed them with water, fruit and roots, and a place to rest. He knew who Rama was and why he had come. He said, "Stay here with me. This is a holy place, and you will be safe."
Rama thanked him, but said, "This place is too close to Ayodhya. People will come looking for us, and I will not be able to keep my vow in peace. Tell us of a quiet place further away."
So Bharadvaja told them about **Chitrakuta**. He described it the way someone describes a place they love. A hill covered in trees, full of honey and fruit. Peacocks calling. Streams running down its sides. Many sages had lived there. Anyone who looks at its peaks, he said, turns their mind to good things.
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To reach Chitrakuta they had to cross the Yamuna. There was no Guha here, no boat. So the two brothers gathered bamboo and dry wood and tied them together with creepers to make a raft. Lakshmana made a soft seat on it for Sita with leaves and branches. In the middle of the river, just as she had done on the Ganga, Sita folded her hands and prayed to the Yamuna for their safe return.
On the far bank they found a great banyan tree that Bharadvaja had told them about. Sita bowed to it too. Walking on, she would point to a flower or a creeper she did not know, and Rama would pick it and give it to her. Valmiki slows down here. He lets us see a husband and wife who have lost everything, walking through a forest in spring, and still delighting in small things.
**
At Chitrakuta they came to the river **Mandakini**, with clear water and sandy banks, and there Rama chose a spot. Lakshmana cut wood and built a hut of branches and leaves, a **parnashala**, strong enough to keep out the wind and rain. Before they lived in it, Rama performed a simple rite of blessing for the new home, the way a family does before moving into a new house even today.
And for a while, they were happy. Rama would show Sita the peaks of the hill in the morning light. They would bathe in the Mandakini. Rama said to her once that living here with her and his brother, he did not miss the kingdom at all.
Picture the scene for a moment. Early morning at the Mandakini. Sages are bathing at the river's edge and offering water to the rising sun. A little way off, deer are drinking, and they are not afraid of people. Flowering trees lean over the bank. Rama says to Sita, look how gently this river moves, as if it is in no hurry to reach anywhere. The man who lost a kingdom a few days ago is finding contentment in the pace of a river. That is Rama's nature. He knows how to live in what is in front of him.
Let us leave them there, in that peace, and go back to Ayodhya.
**
Sumantra had waited at the river bank until Rama was out of sight. Then he drove the empty chariot home. As he entered the city, people crowded round, looking inside the chariot, and when they saw it was empty, they turned away weeping.
Sumantra went to the king. Dasharatha asked him every detail. What did Rama say? What did Sita say? Where did they sleep? Did Lakshmana send a message? And with every answer, the old king grew weaker.
Kausalya, too, was broken with sorrow, and in her pain she spoke hard words to her husband. She said he had sent away his own son. Dasharatha did not answer back. He folded his hands before her and asked for her forgiveness. And Kausalya, seeing her king with folded hands, was ashamed of her words, and she held his hands and wept with him.
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That night, in the dark, Dasharatha told Kausalya something he had carried in his heart for many years.
When he was a young prince, he said, he was proud of one skill. He could shoot an arrow at a sound, without seeing the target. One night, during the rains, he went to the bank of the river **Sarayu**. He heard a sound in the darkness, like an elephant drinking water. He released an arrow towards it.
It was not an elephant. It was a young ascetic, filling a water pot for his old parents, who were blind. The arrow struck him, and the young man did not live.
Before he passed, the young man asked only one thing of the prince: "Take this water to my father and mother. They are waiting and thirsty."
Dasharatha carried the water pot to the old couple in the forest. When they heard what had happened, the father spoke words of grief that became a curse. He said, "You too will leave this world grieving for your son."
Valmiki does not give the young man a name. In later tradition he is remembered as **Shravana Kumar**, the son who carried his parents on his shoulders to the holy places. Many of us grew up with that story. Both tellings carry the same heart: a son's devotion, and an old man's grief.
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Dasharatha said to Kausalya, "Now I understand. What I did in my youth has come back to me. A person always receives the fruit of their own actions, good or bad."
He called out for Rama. He said he could no longer see. He said, "If Rama touched me now, I would live." And in the middle of that night, the king of Ayodhya left this world, with his son's name on his lips. Valmiki says it was the sixth night after Rama left.
In the morning, the singers and servants who came to wake the king found that he would not wake. The palace filled with the sound of weeping.
The wise **Vasishtha** and the ministers met. There was no king in Ayodhya, and both princes who could be crowned were far away. Rama was in the forest. Bharata and Shatrughna were at the home of their grandfather in the kingdom of **Kekaya**. So Vasishtha sent fast messengers to Kekaya. He told them to say nothing of what had happened. Only this: "Come home at once. There is urgent work."
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**One thing to take with you.** Dasharatha carried an old mistake in silence for most of his life. Is there something you have been carrying like that? You do not have to fix it today. Just let yourself say it, once, to someone you trust, or even to God in prayer.
In the next episode, Bharata comes home. And we will meet a younger brother whose love for Rama is so great that it has become a byword in India.
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**Credits (read out):** Written by the DharmikStudio team from the Valmiki Ramayana, Ayodhya Kanda, with a note on the later tradition of Shravana Kumar. Narrated with an AI voice. If you hear a mistake, please use "Report a mistake" on this episode.