Avadh appeared to them as dismal and oppressive as the dark night of Doom; the citizens looked like ghastly beasts and were frightened to see one another.

Their homes appeared like so many crematories, their retainers like ghosts, and their sons and intimates and friends like messengers of death. The trees and creepers in the gardens withered; streams and lakes repelled the eyes.

The numberless horses and elephants, animals kept for pleasure, urban cattle, cuckoos and peacocks, koels, chakavas, parrots and mainas, cranes, swans and partridges

-all stood dismayed at Rama’s departure; they looked like so many pictures drawn here and there. The city resembled some dense forest full of fruit, and the many men and women in it so many birds and beasts.

God had made Kaikeyi a savage Kiratin (a wild woman of the woods) who had set the whole forest in a fierce blaze. Unable to endure the fire of separation from Rama, they all fled in panic

They all thought in their minds, ‘There can be no happiness apart from Rama, Lakshmana and Sita. The whole community will live where Rama takes up his abode; Ayodhya without Rama is of no account to us.’

Having thus firmly resolved, they followed him, forsaking their happy homes, which were the envy of gods. How can the pleasures of sense overpower those who hold the lotus feet of Rama dear to their hearts?