Dressed in sordid clothes, pale, agitated and oppressed with grief and with a wasted frame, she looked (nonplussed) like some fair celestial creeper of gold in the forest, smitten by the frost.

When Kausalya saw Bharata, she sprang up and ran to him, but her head swam round and she dropped unconscious on the ground. Bharata was grievously distressed at the sight and forgetting his own condition, threw himself at her feet

‘Mother,’ he said, ‘where is my father? Where is Sita, and where my brothers, Rama and Lakshmana? Why was Kaikeyi born into this world at all, or, if born, why was she not barren,

- instead of hearing me, a blot of my family, a vessel of infamy, the enemy of all I love? Who in the three spheres is so wretched as I, on whose account, mother, you have been brought to this plight?

My father is in heaven and Rama in the woods, and I alone, like an evil star, the cause of all this calamity! A curse upon me! I am like a fire in the bamboo grove, a sharer in intolerable torment and anguish and a partner in crime!’

On hearing Bharata’s tender words, Kaushalya recovered herself and arose; she lifted Bharata up and clasped him to her bosom, while her eyes shed floods of tears

Simple-hearted and kind, Kausalya pressed Bharata to her bosom as lovingly as though Rama himself had come back. She then embraced Lakshmana’s younger brother (Shatrughna), while her heart overflowed with sorrow and affection.