The one who roars

A person walking by wouldn't have spotted the kid.

People who did see him, didn't consider the sight of a kid sitting alone by the river staring intently at the running waters as an oddity.

He often sat there for hours. He told his father that the riverside helped him concentrate. He told his mother that the riverside calmed him. He told Meenakshi that the riverside was too dangerous and not for little girls like her. He smiled at the thought of Meenakshi. His love for his baby sister eclipsed all the hatred he felt towards the world. She was the only reason he stayed at home.

He realized that he had unwittingly clenched his fist at the thought of home. Perhaps because he never had a home. His village, and the hundreds of villages around his, worshiped his father. His father was the wisest person on earth, they said. Sage Vishrava was a demigod. His home was a school. Students and scholars came from miles away and waited at their doorstep for an audience with his father. He'd rather stay miles away.

He looked at his reflection in the waters. His dark skin glistened in the sunlight. When he walked alongside his father on the streets, he couldn't help but imagine that people were glaring at him. He wasn't one of them.  He stood out among a sea of pale skinned people. People like his father and his step brother.

He could still remember the day he went with father to the local market and got lost. People on the road didn't believe when he said that he lived there. Some threw stones at him, some chased him down the road, as if he were a pest.

He wasn't like them and neither was Meenakshi. Their skin color bothered the people around them. Their skin color didn't let them fit in. But it was not his plight or Meenkashi's that bothered him.

It was his mother's.

They called her names.

His father had two wives. They said the Aryan wife was his father's true wife. They called his mother a temptress and a demon. Mother couldn't be a demon. He heard from someone that she was a princess once. He heard stories of how his grandfather ruled over kingdoms. He heard stories of how his grandfather fought countless wars and finally decided that it was time for peace.

They said that his father and his mother fell in love. In their love, his grandfather saw a prospect of peace. The marriage between his father and his mother was supposed to seal a pact of peace between the dark skinned raksha tribe and the fair skinned invaders.

He never sensed peace. He could never sense acceptance. At best, there was status quo.

His brow clenched at the sound of anklets. He knew who that was. He didn't bother to turn around.

"Didn't I tell you that the riverside wasn't a place for tiny young girls, Meenakshi?'

He could hear a sobbing sound.

He turned around, and faced a tiny young girl, who true to her name had the most beautiful eyes he ever saw.

She wiped the tears off her eyes and fell into his embrace.

"He said.. He said that he was father's true son. He said he will always be the one who will be known as Vishrava's son. He said that he is Sage Vishrava's son, and that I should call him Vaishravana. He said you could never be Vaishravana. He said.. he said..."

He knew that she was talking about their step brother.

He hugged her, and ran his fingers through her hair.

He looked into her wide eyes, and smiled as he pulled her nose.

She sat down on his lap and they both stared at the gushing water.

"Do you know what my name means? I am Dasagriv. The one with ten heads. One day, I will roar with my ten heads, and he will run for cover"

Meenakshi giggled.

"Let him be Vaishravana. I will be the one who roars. I will be the ten headed Ravana"