"What a
fool are you that, sunk in sensual pleasures and arrogantly secure of sovereignty, you are
not awake to the deadly danger that threatens your existence at your very doors! Surely
that king who is drunk with self-importance and dead to all portents that threaten his
state is doomed to shame and destruction! No object is of less account or more
contemptible than a ruler who falls through his own remissness. Know you not that your brothers, Khara, Dooshana and Trisiras and
your gallant army of fourteen thousand fierce Raakshasas have been exterminated by Raama,
a mere man, and that your outpost at Janasthaana has been destroyed? One moment I saw a
single warrior stand proud in the glittering pageantry of war and the next, they lay dead
stain by that man's arrows, strewing the ground like ripe crops devastated by a terrible
hail-storm; and you see me, your own sister, disgraced, mutilated and heart-broken! Have
you no thoughts of vengeance-you, a hero, a brother, king?" |