Why Hanuman Tore Open His Chest

Hanuman put both hands on his own ribs and pulled, in a throne room, in front of his king, because a queen had handed him a gift and he had thrown it on the floor. It was the greatest day Ayodhya had ever seen. Rama was crowned, and every throne in the world had sent someone. Hanuman was offered a seat with the kings and put it aside. He sat on the stone at the edge of the platform instead, close enough to touch Rama's foot, and nobody argued with him. Then Sita walked the whole length of the white cloth carrying the rope of pearls from her father's house. They had gone into the forest with her. They had gone into Lanka with her. They had come back. There were kings in that hall who could have bought a city and could not have bought this. She did not stop at Sugriva, who was a king. She did not stop at Vibhishana, who was a king. She stopped in front of a monkey sitting on the floor. You brought me back, she said. Take them. He did not stand up. He raised them to his mouth and bit the first one. It cracked, cleanly and quietly. He held the two halves up to his eyes, looked inside, opened his fingers, and let them fall. The second. The third. The fourth. By the twelfth there was a white scatter of broken pearls around a monkey's feet on a queen's white cloth. By the twentieth a king had come halfway out of his seat and been pulled back down by his own son. He did not hurry and he did not look up. He was not destroying them. He was searching them. Do you know what you have just thrown on the ground, said Vibhishana. Then tell this hall why you broke them. I was looking for his name in them, said Hanuman. It was not there. So they were worth nothing to me. And a king in the third row made a joke. Then is his name in you, monkey? Should we open you as well? He was still smiling when he finished saying it. So Hanuman stood up. He did not answer the king. He put his right hand flat on his chest, then his left beside it. Lakshmana came off his seat. Rama did not move, because Rama was the only one who knew what was coming. There was no blood on the white cloth. There was light. Inside his chest, seated, were Rama and Sita. Not carved, not painted, not a likeness. The same two people sitting eleven feet away on the platform. The light in that hall stopped coming from the windows, and a whole wall of kings went down onto the floor. Then Rama walked down off the platform, through the broken pearls, closed his chest with one hand, and told him to ask for anything. He could have asked to be made a god. He could have asked for the curse taken off him, the one that left him sitting on a beach not knowing what his own arms could do. He could have asked for the thing every ascetic in every forest was starving himself for. He could have asked to be released, to be finished, to stop. There is no version of this story where Rama refuses any of it. What he asked for instead is the reason people still leave one seat empty when the Ramayana is read aloud.