Having collapsed at the sight of Rama, Lakshmana and Sita leaving, and haunted by the injustice he has done his son, King Dasaratha lies on his deathbed lamenting that fate is punishing him cruelly. “What wrong have I done in my life to deserve this?” he asks, holding the hands of his wife Kausalya.

Then it all comes back to him –

“What wrong have I done to you to deserve this?” the teenage boy asks, bleeding from the arrow Dasaratha has shot.

Though this event took place long ago, when Dasaratha was just a prince, even then he had no answer. He’d heard a deer drinking at the river’s edge and shot an arrow in the direction of the sound. It was not a deer but this teenager, filling his pot of water. Dasaratha had committed a terrible crime, prompted by pride in his own hunting skills. He had been trained as a great warrior and had learned the trick of aiming and shooting by ear. Even in pitch dark, he had the incredible skill of hitting his target, identifying it just by sound. Pride had resulted in this tragedy.

“Forgive me,” Dasaratha says in a trembling voice.

Sravana Kumara, the wounded boy, whispers, “I...