66697602-The-Ramayana-R-K-Narayan

you are welcome. May you be blessed. Tell me who you are,
where you have come from, who are your kinsmen, and what
you are doing, so accomplished and beautiful, in this
solitude? What is the purpose of your visit here?”
“Here I answer your question with humility. I am the
daughter of Sage Visravas, son of Pulastya, who was
Brahma’s own son; half-sister of that friend of Lord Shiva,
Kubera, the wealthiest man and the most generous in all the
worlds, who lives in the north; and direct younger sister of
one at whose name gods in heaven and emperors of this
world tremble, and who once tried to lift Mount Kailas itself
with Lord Shiva and Parvathi on it. My name is Kamavalli.”
Rama asked in surprise, “Do you mean that you are
Ravana’s sister?”
“Yes, I am,” she replied proudly.
He concealed the many misgivings that stirred in him and
asked, “If you are Ravana’s sister, how have you come to
possess this form?”
“I abhorred the ways of my brother and other relations and
their demoniac qualities; I abhor sin and cruelty and prize all
virtues and goodness; I want to be different from my kinsmen
and I have earned this personality through constant prayers.”
“Oh, beauty, will you explain why, when you happen to be
the sister of that overlord of three worlds, Ravana, you have
not come surrounded with attendants and bearers, but all