Deyi Baidethi, who bore her twin sons through Kamadeva’s divine grace, takes on the form of a herbal garden as soon as he thinks of her. There the mango and asoka trees grow, laden with lush bunches of sunshine-yellow, orange-yellow and red flowers, in plentiful profusion, enough to gladden the hardest heart.
Kamadeva’s hands reach out desperately. Deyi Baidethi nods. Vivid flowers drop down and his hands glow sunshine-yellow-orange-red. He has got his first two flowers, the mango and the asoka. Happier, he goes forward and finds, in the middle of the garden, the deep peaceful lake that no sound betrays. Two more flower arrows, the white kamala and the blue kamala, float there in majestic beauty.
Then Deyi Baidethi smiles and Kamadeva picks the glowing swetasanchari from one of the shrubs around. He blows at this final arrow and the yellow pollen flies away into the wind, carrying the power of all the other flowers. Kamadeva laughs with abandon, joy sparkling in his eyes. The pollen flies on the peals of his laughter to land on the nearest suryavamsi bud. The suryavamsi blooms bright red.
2
RAMANI’S STORY
ost people get bored with the flower story around this time. So Annaiah introduces the love interest. In a haunting intonation, he says: The king’s daughter, Rajkumari Ramani, the most beautiful woman in the world, is staring dreamily at the water fountain in her palace garden when she hears Kamadeva laugh.
It draws her like the call of the wandering jogi for whom even the content married woman leaves behind her child and husband forever. Without a thought, Ramani runs through the imposing dark-grey gates of her father’s seven-walled fortress, following the waves of that laugh.
On and on she runs, barefoot over hills and dales, over thorny paths and sharp rocks, her feet bleeding, her anklets tinkling anxiously, wending her way through dusty paths, uncaring of wild beasts or watching devvas.
She reaches our wall. But there is not a crack in it, not a single way in. She needs to get to the other side. She can hear the constant tormenting laughter there, calling her. She traces the wall, presses it from all angles, trying to find an opening. She even hits the hard stone with her soft fists, crying in pain. Still, no one comes to help her.
It is thus that the king’s men find her, hours later, despairing and defeated. She, the princess of all she surveys, folds those bloodied hands and pleads with them: Please, help me, help me cross this wall. The leader of those men, a stern man like Doddegowda here, who has daughters himself, ignores her pleas and carries her back on his swift black horse to the well-guarded palace of her father.
The beautiful princess starts wasting away, haunted by an inhuman laugh. The king, worried by the fading pink in his daughter’s cheeks, calls on his subjects to find a way to cure her. Through every town and village the royal crier goes, announcing: Revive the rajkumari and the king will give you half his kingdom and her hand in marriage.