Damayanti Awakens to Find Nala Gone
Damayanti wakes in a deserted forest to find her husband Nala has abandoned her while she slept. She runs madly through the wilderness, crying out for him — first in grief, then in anger, then in a desperate hope that he is hiding behind the creepers and will answer her call.
Damayanti woke. The forest was empty. The fatigue that had pulled her into sleep was gone, and in its place was a terror that seized her before she could even understand what she was seeing.
Nala was not there.
She was alone in that deserted forest, and the truth of it struck her like a blow. She cried out — a sound that carried through the trees and met no answer.
"O great king! O protector! Why did you forsake me? I am dead! I am destroyed!"
She called him by his kingdom — Nishadha — as if the name itself might summon him. She reminded him of who he was: a man learned in dharma, a man who had always spoken the truth. How could he have uttered a falsehood? While she slept, how could he have left her in this forest? She had been obedient, devoted, had caused him no harm.
Then she remembered something else. In earlier times, before the lords of the worlds — the gods themselves — Nala had spoken certain words. How could he make them come true now?
"O bull among men! There has been enough of this jest. Let it not go any further. O invincible one! Show yourself to me."
She thought she saw him — hidden behind the creepers. "I have seen you! I have seen you! O Nishadha! Stay there! Why don't you reply to me?"
There was no reply.
Her grief turned to anger. She called him cruel. She saw herself lamenting, and he did not come to comfort her. But then her voice broke again, and she spoke what truly terrified her: not her own suffering, but his. "O king! I am sorrowing because you will have to be alone. In the evening, you will be thirsty, hungry and exhausted from labour. You will be under a tree and how will you exist without seeing me?"
She dashed through the forest like one maddened. In one instant she stood up; in the next she fell unconscious. She wept, she sighed, she cried out his name. She cursed whatever being had brought this evil upon Nala — may that being live a life full of unhappiness. And then she ran again, searching for her husband in a forest frequented by wild beasts, calling his name until her voice was raw. Aranyaka Parva, Chapter 357