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Below is transcript of battle story between Lakshman and Indrajit from a book named : Ramayana : a modern retelling .
Hope you enjoy this version.
Lakshmana picked up his bow. He put on his armor and took the
padadhuli from Rama's feet. His moment of destiny had arrived.
He said, "Bless me, Rama, who are my brother and my God. Let
my arrows drink Indrajit's blood."
Rama laid his palm on his brother's head. Lakshmana
embraced him tenderly; then he followed Vibheeshana and the
vanaras toward Nikumbhila. Jambavan went with them, with a
hundred great bears who had crossed the ocean into Lanka.
Swiftly, stealthily, they arrived in Nikumbhila. They heard theyagna fire crackling; they heard Indrajit chanting mantras of
power. All else was silence. Vibheeshana said, "We must attack
them before it is too late. The vanaras must take the rakshasas
unawares. When Indrajit comes out in anger, let him find
Lakshmana waiting for him."
Rising out of the jungle around the yagna, armed with rocks
and trees, the monkeys attacked Indrajit's demons. Savagely came
the vanaras, and in a moment a hundred rakshasas lay dead, their
heads crushed with wild weapons. The demons seized up their
swords and fought back, and the yagnashala turned into a
battlefield. Blood splashed everywhere; hewn-off limbs flew at
bizarre trajectories, and Indrajit's solemn chanting was drowned by
the roars of monkey and demon. More deafening than these were
the roars of Jambavan's bears, who flew at the rakshasas in a blackstorm; their fangs and claws were death's lightning.
His sacrifice ruined, Indrajit jumped up with a cry. Red-eyed,
he stalked out from the yagnashala, and that prince was terrible,
even to look at.
Vibheeshana said to Lakshmana, "He is beside himself with
anger; you have the advantage."
Hanuman, who had come along for the battle, had grown huge
again. He pulled up a knotted tree for his weapon and battered the
rakshasas to a pulp before they could run from him. Growling to
see the son of the wind, Indrajit sprang at him. But then
Lakshmana pulled on his bowstring. He stood behind the great old
nyagrodha tree under which the yagna fire still burned, neglected.
The forest echoed with that sound. Turning away from Hanuman
with a snarl, Indrajit faced Lakshmana. Vibheeshana stood beside the kshatriya. Indrajit realized at
once who had brought the vanaras to this secret place. Choking
with rage, he hissed, "Traitor! You have eaten the salt of Lanka all
your life and you shall be damned forever. No rakshasa child will
ever say your name except as a curse. You have betrayed your
brother and your nephew. How could you, coward?
"You are Rama's slave; but remember, Vibheeshana, you are
dealing with the enemy. Once his use for you is over, he will not
spare your life. He will kill you like the cur you are."
Vibheeshana cried, "You are the evil spawn of an evil father.
Ravana had every chance to save himself and his people. But he
would not walk the way of dharma. You may be a great warrior,
but you have no wisdom, only arrogance. It is true I was born a
rakshasa, but I never loved violence as the rest of you do. And
though he is a greater warrior than you or your father, Rama shuns
violence whenever he can. He knows the way of violence is not the
way of dharma.
"The wise have always said that to lust after another man's
wife is madness; it is the sin that ruins a man. But Ravana has
always reveled in sin, making a life of it: whether murdering rishis
for his sport or reviling the Devas who are the guardians of the
earth. But now the time has come to pay; neither your father nor
you will escape.
"Look, Indrajit. Lakshmana guards the nyagrodha tree where
your agni burns. Not you, but he. Dare you approach it, dare you
tempt your death?"
For the first time in his wild and heroic life, Indrajit felt a cold
pang of fear.
Hissing like an angry cobra, Indrajit mounted his chariot.
Hanuman appeared at Lakshmana's side and lightly lifted the
kshatriya onto his shoulders. The horses Brahma had given Indrajit
shone like silver in the midmorning sun. The rakshasa cried,
"Foolish mortal, have you forgotten how you and your brother
twice lay in a swoon of death? No one can save you from me three
times."
But Lakshmana was calm, now this moment of fate was upon
him. He said quietly, "Brave words and brave deeds are not the same thing. Besides, each time you came to battle, you came
invisibly. Only cowards fight like that, because they are afraid of
their enemy and afraid to die. Let me see your valor now that we
are face to face."
Before he had finished speaking, Indrajit shot a clutch of
searing arrows at him. They covered his fair body in a blossoming
of blood. With a cry, Lakshmana loosed five narachas at the
rakshasa. They stung Indrajit and he roared; but they did not wound
him gravely.
On they fought, the prince of Lanka and the prince of Ayodhya.
Both were quick as light, both were masters of archery. Like two
lions for the lordship of a jungle, they battled. Soon astras flared
from their bows and lit up the hillside as if other suns had risen
into the day.
Arrows stuck in each one's body and blood flowed richly from
their wounds. They fought on, unmindful, upon the edge of death.
The forest was hushed at the sound of their bowstrings, and all the
rakshasas, vanaras, and reekshas around them grew still, as if they
realized how pointless their lesser contentions were. They stood
gazing at the mythic duel. And it seemed primeval phalanxes
fought from the two princes' bodies: timeless legions of darkness
and light.
A hum of subtle shafts from Lakshmana's magic quiver clipped
the joints of Indrajit's armor. Like a snake's skin, the light silver
mail fell away from the demon prince's body. Crouching bared,
Indrajit shot twenty arrows in a blur, not only at Lakshmana but
now at Vibheeshana as well. Taken unawares, Vibheeshana was
struck down; he bore no arms against his nephew. But he recovered quickly and plucked the barbs from him. Yet his cry of pain
distracted Lakshmana for a moment. In a flash, Indrajit shot his
armor away also, and he was as unprotected as his adversary.
By now Vibheeshana had joined the fray. He killed a hundred
rakshasas, but not an arrow did he shoot at his brother's son. Blind
and deaf to everything around them save each other and their
missiles, Lakshmana and Indrajit fought on. War was their art;
they were masters, absorbed in their arcane craft. Both were so far
above any other warrior there that only the princes themselves, one
of grace and the other of evil, fathomed the dimensions of their
duel. This was a trial of superior wills: a contention of two great
spirits, to the death of one.
The wind did not stir when Indrajit and Lakshmana dueled at
Nikumbhila; the birds and beasts of the forest were hushed. Slowly an unnatural twilight fell on that place, because the very sky was
veiled with arrows. They loosed their shafts with the swiftness of
inspiration, and both warriors were hardly visible for this speed.
Indrajit fought from the air and the ground; and when he flew up,
Hanuman rose with him. Finally the demon saw that fighting from
the sky was no advantage to him: the son of the wind was quicker
through the air than his magic horses.
Not merely that forest or island, but all the earth held its breath
when these princes fought. In the deepest jungles and on the most
exalted, faraway mountains, fires of sacrifice flickered and died
down, when Indrajit and Lakshmana dueled on Lanka.
Then, as if with strength and will he had saved for this moment,
Lakshmana struck Indrajit's horses with eight scorching arrows; so
they whinnied in agony and blood spurted from their flanks. As those fine steeds faltered for a moment, Lakshmana killed
Indrajit's charioteer with another shaft through his heart. With a
curse, Indrajit leaped onto the chariot head. Thrusting his dead
sarathy out of the way, he seized the fallen reins and drove the
silver horses himself, while in the same hand that gripped the reins
he held his bow and covered Lakshmana with fire.
But now Ravana's son's prowess was constrained, and the
vanaras jumped onto his horses' backs. Indrajit could not hold
them off while he fought Lakshmana and drove the chariot at once.
With fangs, nails, mighty sinews, and rocks, the monkeys killed
Indrajit's horses.
Night fell on the jungle. No one saw where Indrajit melted into
it and vanished back to the city of Lanka. Lakshmana killed a
thousand rakshasas, while his eyes always sought their prince. His ire was risen now; Indrajit and he had battled at the ends of their
genius. It was a tide in him, the spirit of that elegant and mortal
duel, and Lakshmana could hardly contain it.
Fortunately for his rakshasas, Indrajit traveled on a wizard's
feet to Lanka. He did not tarry there for even a moment; no one
saw him come or go. He mounted another chariot, fleet as the one
the monkeys had destroyed. It was yoked to horses as marvelous as
those that had died: Brahma had given him a whole stable of them.
Like Yama's wrath, the rakshasa flew back into battle. In fury
at what they had done to his horses, he fell wildly on the monkeys.
He killed countless vanaras before Lakshmana stood before him
again and drew his fire. Fortune smiled on Lakshmana for an
instant, and he broke Indrajit's bow in his hands.
But quick as fear, Indrajit picked up another bow and loosed a sizzle of arrows at Vibheeshana and Hanuman.
Having exhausted
the lesser astras, having gauged each other, the two archers now
summoned more powerful weapons. Indrajit invoked a pale shaft
of death, a yamastra, and shot it at Lakshmana. But Lakshmana cut
it down with an artful weapon of the mountain yakshas: great
Kubera's astra. Joined in momentous flames, the two ayudhas
plunged into the sea, to be extinguished in the deep, after hours.
Lakshmana invoked the varunastra, of cold and watery death.
But Indrajit met it with a fiery raudra; screaming in the sky, the
two put each other out and fell in gray ashes to the earth.
Lakshmana loosed the agneyastra of a thousand flames, but his
enemy's calid suryastra erupted against it. Fire consumed fire on
high, and both subsided.
Indrajit fitted an asurastra to his bowstring, a demoniacal weapon and close to his heart; it was the astra of his race. But
Lakshmana met it with a mahesvarastra, as it came keening at him,
and smashed it into shards of darkness.
It was each other's
knowledge, as much as each other's strength and quickness, that
the two warriors plumbed: their gyana of the devastras. For every
suryastra would not put out every agneyastra; nor would all
mahesvarastras cut down any asurastra. Myriad were the astras and
infinite their variety. Only the greatest archers, who had been
instructed in their lore by the most knowing gurus, could match
one another missile for missile as Lakshmana and Indrajit did.
Only those blessed by the guardians of the occult weapons could
survive a duel like this one for as long as these princes did.
Unseen, in the ethereal akasa, the fifth element, the rishis and
the pitrs gathered in the sky and poured down their blessings in subtle waves over Lakshmana, who fought like a lion below them.
He heard a voice in his heart, whispering urgently to him, "The
moment of his death has come. Summon the astra of the king of
the Gods; kill him with Indra's weapon."
Lakshmana invoked the Indrastra. He
whispered a fierce prayer: "If it is true Rama has never strayed
from dharma, let this arrow have Indrajit's life in my brother's
name."
Clearing the darkness, lighting the faces of the ancestors and
the sages with unearthly luster, the astra flared from Lakshmana's
bow. And Indrajit had no answer to it. It took his lean head from
his neck in a scarlet flash and his scream echoed through the
shocked forest. When the light of the astra faded, the severed head
lay on the red earth of Lanka like a golden lotus sprouted from the soil.
The vanaras' triumphant roaring shook Ravana's palace and
fell on Rama's ears across the mountain. Like the sun fallen to the
earth, Indrajit's head lay glowing in death: a star burned down. His
pale body lay apart, like the moon cursed by Daksha to wane
forever. Wailing, the rakshasas fled back to Ravana on his lonely
throne, to tell him his last hope had been dashed.
Once Mandodari's brilliant son had brought Indra himself,
bound in hoops of fire, to Lanka. He had paraded the Lord of the
Devas through the streets of his father's city. Today Indrajit lay
dead, his head plucked from his body by Indra's astra.
Lakshmana stood drenched in blood; his bowstring still quivered
from discharging the aindrastra that killed Indrajit. Petal rain fell
out of the sky, as if the Devas had crushed a rainbow and showered
the pieces down on the kshatriya. This was the most critical victory
yet. Indrajit had been the key to this war, the only rakshasa who
had seemed invincible.
Joy coursed through heaven and earth. But Ravana was not yet
dead. Glowing with his achievement, Lakshmana came before
Rama. When Vibheeshana told him Indrajit was dead, Rama jumped up and cried to his brother, "Now are you a man!"
Rama clasped Lakshmana to him and kissed him repeatedly. He
said, "This is the greatest triumph of our war. As long as Indrajit
lived, victory was just a dream. Now it is within reach."
Then, his eyes filling to see Lakshmana's wounds, Rama began
to clean them himself, like a mother. Though Lakshmana blushed
brightly, Rama would not let him move. "What you have done will
break Ravana's heart. Indrajit was his last hope; now Ravana is as
good as dead."
When Lakshmana told him what Hanuman and Vibheeshana
had done, Rama hugged them also. He said, "It won't be long now.
Ravana will come to fight me."
Sushena arrived there. Rama handed Lakshmana over to his
care, for the younger prince was in pain. Hanuman and Vibheeshana were wounded as well, and some vanaras and
reekshas. Patiently and gently, Sushena went to work on them all.
Soon their pain was eased and their wound mouths were closed by
his attentions. In those days, the healing herbs of the earth were
truly effective; it is only in the kali yuga they have lost so much of
their potency.
Shaft by shaft, the duel between Lakshmana and Indrajit was
described to an avid Rama. Indrajit's courage and skill were
praised, and the fact that he never used maya while he fought. Man
to man they had battled; the better warrior prevailed and the one
whose death was written was vanquished. Vibheeshana, who knew
Rama worried about Lakshmana's quick temper, said how calm
Lakshmana had been on this, the great occasion. And that was what
had given him victory; because Indrajit had fought with anger Not once or twice but ten times Rama made them repeat each
detail of the battle, as this was indeed music to his ears. A hundred
times he hugged Lakshmana, making him blush, in embarrassment
and joy.
CID
Kumkum Bhagya
Pyaar Kii Ye Ek Kahaani
Kabhi Neem Neem Kabhi Shahad Shahad
