‘I have,’ he cried, ‘a brother like Kumbhakarna and the famed Meghanada for a son. And have you never heard on my own valour too, how I conquered the whole of creation, both animate and inanimate?

Fool, with the help of monkeys Rama has bridged the ocean and that’s all his claim to valour. There are birds innumerable which fly across the ocean, yet listen, O monkey, they are no heroes all.

Each one of my arms is a sea brimming over with a flood of strength in which many a valiant god and man has been drowned! What champion is there so strong that he will reach the end of (or measure and overcome) these twenty oceans unfathomable and boundless?

I even made the guardians of the eight quarters draw water for me, while you, O wretch, prate to me of the glory of an earthly prince! If that master of yours whose virtues you recount again and again, is valiant in battle,

then why does he send an ambassador? Isn’t he ashamed of making terms with an enemy? Just look at my arms that lifted and violently shook Kailasa and then, foolish monkey, extol your master, if you like.

What hero is there to equal Ravana, who with his own hands cut off his heads time after time and offered them to the sacrificial fire with great delight, Shiva, Gauri’s lord, be my witness?

When as my skulls began to burn I saw the decree traced on my forehead by the Creator, and read that I was to die at the hands of a mortal, I laughed, for I knew that Brahma’s prophecy was a lie.