Bhima and Rama

Sanjaya reports to Dhritarashtra that after the Pandavas' defeat at dice, Krishna and their allies visited them in Kamyaka forest. Krishna vowed to kill Duryodhana and his allies, but Yudhishthira insisted on keeping his thirteen-year vow. The assembled warriors then pledged to Draupadi that her oppressors would be destroyed when the time came.

Bhima asks the ape to reveal his true identity. The ape speaks: he was born from Kesari and Vayu, the wind god — the same wind that gave Bhima his own strength. He is Hanuman, the monkey who served Rama, who leaped across the ocean to find Sita, who burned Lanka and returned. He tells Bhima that he asked Rama for a single boon: to live as long as Rama's deeds were sung on earth. Rama agreed. And so Hanuman is still here.

Bhima, awestruck by his brother's power, asks why Hanuman did not simply kill Ravana himself and end the war before it began. Hanuman's answer is not about ability — it is about glory, and whose story this was meant to be.

Bhima asks to see the form Hanuman took when he leapt across the ocean to find Sita. Hanuman obliges — and grows into a mountain-sized being with copper eyes and sharp teeth, covering the plantain grove and darkening the directions, leaving even the mighty Bhima overwhelmed.

Yudhishthira sits in the forest, weighed down by exile and loss, when the ancient sage Markandeya finds him. Instead of empty comfort, Markandeya offers a series of comparisons — Rama’s endurance in the wilderness, Indra’s victories won through allies, and the Pandavas’ own recent rescue of Draupadi from Jayadratha — to argue that Yudhishthira has no reason to despair.