Free Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie Page A

magic line in the dirt all the way across the mouth of the little hermitage and warned her not to cross it or to invite anyone else to do so. The line was powerfully enchanted and would protect her from harm. But the moment Lakshman had left, the demon king Ravan showed up disguised as a wandering mendicant dressed in a tattered ochre cloth and wooden sandals, and carrying a cheap umbrella. He did not talk like a holy beggar, however, but effusively praised, in sequence, Sita’s skin, her scent, her eyes, her face, her hair, her breasts and her waist. He said nothing about her legs. Her legs would have been concealed from view, of course, and although a great
rakshasa
like Ravan would surely have been able to see through cloth he could not admit it, because if he had praised her lower body his salacious hidden nature would have been revealed instantly. Boonyi Kaul’s almost-fourteen-year-old legs were already long and slender. She wanted to know about Sita Devi’s legs and was frustrated that they were never described.
    She wanted to know, too, whether it was in spite of or because of his lecherous, flattering speech that Sita invited Ravan in disguise to come indoors and rest. It was a question of some importance because once Sita had invited the stranger to cross the magic line its power was broken. Moments later Ravan resumed his true multiheaded form and carried Sita off to his kingdom of Lanka, abducted her against her noble will in the flying chariot drawn by the green mules. The great eagle Jatayu, old and blind, tried to save her, killing the mules in the air and making the chariot fall to earth, but Ravan picked up Sita and leapt unharmed to the ground and when tired Jatayu attacked him he cut off the eagle’s wings.
    Surely the whole epic conflict could not simply be Sita’s fault, Boonyi Kaul thought. “Jatayu, you have died for me,” Sita cried out. That was true. But how could the responsibility for everything that followed the abduction, the eagle’s fall, the countrywide search for the missing princess, the mighty war against Ravan, the rivers of blood and mountains of death, be laid at the door of Ram’s revered wife? What a strange meaning that would give to the old story—that women’s folly undid men’s magic, that heroes had to fight and die because of the vanity that had made a pretty woman act like a dunce. That didn’t feel right. The dignity, the moral strength, the intelligence of Sita was beyond doubt and could not so trivially be set aside. Boonyi gave the story a different interpretation. However much Sita’s family members sought to protect her, Boonyi thought, the demon king still existed, was hopelessly besotted by her, and would have to be faced sooner or later. A woman’s demons were out there, like her lovers, and she could only be coddled for so long. It was better to be done with magic lines and to confront your destiny. Lines in the dirt were all very well but they only delayed matters. What had to happen should be allowed to happen or it could never be overcome.
    And so who was this boy, the son of the village headman, the new pratfalling clown prince of the performing troupe, the lover she was preparing to meet in the upper sheep meadow above the village at midnight? Was he her epic hero or her demon king, or both? Would they exalt each other or be destroyed by what they had resolved to do? Had she chosen foolishly or well? For certainly she had invited him to cross a powerful line. How handsome he was, she mused tenderly, how funny in his clowning, how pure in his singing, how graceful in the dance and gravity-free on the high rope, and best of all how wonderfully gentle of nature. This was no warrior demon! He was sweet Noman, who called himself Shalimar the clown partly in her honor, because they had both come into the world on the same night in the Shalimar garden almost fourteen years ago, and partly in her mother’s, because she had died there on that night of many