360. Ravana fights valiantly.

                 The mind of Ravana was in absolute turmoil. It never occurred to him that all his three valiant aids Mahodara, Mahaparshva and Virupaksha would be killed in a row, that too by monkeys. He felt that he should revenge that immediately. He shouted at his charioteer "Hi! fellow! I wanna kill those two chaps, Rama and Lakshmana, now. Then only my intense sorrow for the loss of my those three valiant and faithful ministers will somewhat subside. Now take me to the proximity of Rama, pronto. All the worlds and all the spectators in the firmament will now see how valiant and capable I am."

              On his way to Rama, Ravana was making some tremendous noise in all the ten directions filling the entire earth including its rivers, mountains and forests. And all of them trembled, throwing lions, antelopes and birds, into fright. Simultaneously he set out a very highly terrific and exceedingly frightful astra called Tamasa, which began to hit and kill a bunch of vanaras at a time.

         Seeing that, the other vanaras started running away in terrific fright. On learning about the unfair,  unreasonable, unjustified and unscrupulous action of Ravana on the hapless vanaras, who were trying hard to escape the astra , Rama rushed to accost Ravana, duly armed himself with his bow Kodandam et. al. and accompanied by his dear brother Lakshmana.

      Seeing lots of vanaras dropping dead and the others were running away to escape death, Ravana laughed merrily with contentment. He then noticed some figure was coming toward his chariot. When he looked up he found that it was Rama, along with his brother Lakshmana. He was waiting for that to happen. Now that Rama and his brother Lakshmana were in front of him, Ravana, feeling both happy and angry got ready with his bow and arrows to vanquish them.

      The duel between Ravana with his ten heads and twenty hands and Rama and Lakshmana started. Ravana split the arrows of Lakshmana one with one, three with three and ten with ten arrows. Bypassing Lakshmana, Ravana turned towards Rama. The sight of Rama made Ravana seethe with anger making  his eyes turning red. He then released streams of arrows upon Rama. Rama tore off all those arrows, which were blazing and looking very terrific like enraged serpents, with his arrows.

         Both were thus fighting furiously and tirelessly. As it was the fag end of the monsoon, the sky, which was covered with clouds making flashes of lightning, became more dark and dense with arrows of various kinds, obscuring the lightning.

      They continued their duel even after the sun-set. Ravana was fighting with the determination to kill Rama, by hook or crook. 

      Both the duelists were excellent archers. Both were skilled in war-fare. Both were eminently skilled in the use of missiles. Both moved unhindered in the battle-field. In whichever course both of them went, in the same respective direction, streams of arrows went, like waves in two oceans, whipped by the wind.

       Hissing like an angry serpent, Ravana who was endowed with extraordinary energy and conjuring tricks, released towards Rama astras having the heads of donkeys, boars, dogs and cocks as also of alligators and venomous snakes. He was pretty sure that Rama would get thoroughly confused and get killed.
          Without flinching a muscle, Rama countered those astras from Ravana by an astra with the potential of various astras. To the utter disappointment of Ravana his astras were blown into smithereens in the sky and fell down in thousands of pieces. Rejoiced to see that missile struck down by Rama, who was unweary in action, all the happy vanaras cried "Bravao! ....".

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