He was reborn as Laxman in the grimy slums of a grand metropolis, a sprawling hub of trade and royal power in one of the ancient kingdoms. His birth was ordinary and unmarked by omens; merely a weak cry in a cramped hut of mud bricks and dried straw, illuminated by a single flickering clay oil lamp that smelled of cheap sesame oil. His parents were dirt-poor outcasts scraping survival from the city's underbelly.
His mother, Rita, a frail woman with hollow cheeks and eyes already weary of the world, had labored in the fields even while heavy with child. Pregnancy ravaged her weakened body. Fever and constant bleeding claimed her strength. She lingered only a few months after Laxman's birth, whispering her final words to her children with cracked lips; "Love each other… as I loved you." She passed quietly in the night. Her body was wrapped in ragged cloth and cremated on a meager pyre by the polluted riverbank. Her ashes were scattered to the winds according to the crude customs of the slum dwellers, as if even the Ganges herself turned a blind eye to the poorest of her children.
Laxman's father, Aakash, was a broken husk of a man, once a skilled blacksmith, now a drunken wreck staggering through filthy alleys. He drowned his failures in cheap, throat-burning liquor sold by street vendors, his fists lashing out in blind rage at anyone nearby. Aakash had fathered three surviving children before Laxman; the eldest, Bharat (13), a sturdy boy with calloused hands who worked from before sunrise in a smoky, low-caste smithy hammering out iron helmets, breastplates, and shields for the royal army. His meager wages bought coarse roti and bitter leafy greens, the only barrier between the family and starvation. "I will provide for us," Bharat would say quietly, ruffling Laxman's hair with soot-blackened fingers, his young back already bent from endless hammer swings.
The elder sister, Gita (11), toiled in a dingy eatery near the bustling market, scrubbing pots crusted with old grease and washing linens stained with spilled dal and sweat. Her small hands grew raw from harsh lye soap, yet she still hummed the gentle lullabies their mother once sang, dreaming of days when hunger would not be their constant shadow.
The second eldest brother, Dev (8), was built like a young bull, broad shoulders and thick limbs earned from street scavenging and rough fights. The wide gaps between the siblings' spoke of tragedy; after Dev, four infants had come and gone, stillborn or dead within weeks from hunger and the fevers that stalked the slums like hungry ghosts. Each tiny death had chipped away at Aakash's soul. In drunken rages he blamed Rita, accusing her of weakness, or worse, infidelity, fueled by vicious rumors spread by jealous neighbors. "You cheated on me, you worthless witch!" he would slur, beating her with a leather belt until dark bruises bloomed across her skin like poisonous flowers. Once a loving husband with steady work at the forge, Aakash had surrendered completely to ego, lust, and despair. On drunken nights his desire would flare violently; he would force himself upon Rita with grunting, selfish thrusts while she wept silently beneath him. The neighbors, weavers, beggars, and fellow outcasts, whispered behind thin walls but never intervened. In the slums, interference invited knives in the dark.
Yet amid this suffering, Laxman discovered a rare silver thread of genuine familial love, perhaps a karmic mercy granted by the heavens to balance past lives of isolation. Bharat, Gita, and Dev adored their youngest brother fiercely, seeing him as their mother's final, precious gift. They shared every meager meal, Bharat sneaking extra pieces of roti from the smithy, Gita telling soft bedtime stories of heroic devas and ancient rishis, Dev carrying him piggyback through muddy lanes. "You are our little light," Gita would whisper, hugging him tight against her thin chest. Aakash mostly ignored Laxman, lost in his alcoholic haze, until a violent coughing sickness claimed him when Laxman was three. Blood bubbled from his lips in a healer's hut before he died. His body was buried without ceremony. His death lifted a heavy shadow from the surviving children.