The Story of the Rescue from the Underworld
Late one night, while the war camp slept, a shadow crept silently between the tents — Ahiravan, a clever sorcerer-king who ruled a hidden kingdom deep beneath the earth, and a secret ally of Ravana. Using powerful magic, he slipped past every guard without a sound, gently lifted the sleeping Rama and Lakshman, and vanished with them into the ground, down into his underground world of Patal Lok.
Hanuman woke at dawn to find the camp in an uproar. Rama and Lakshman were gone.
He did not panic. He simply set his jaw, took a deep breath, and dove straight down into the earth after them, tunnelling through rock and root and darkness until he emerged into the strange, glowing underworld below.
Patal Lok stretched out before him, lit by eerie violet torches, its winding halls guarded by watchful creatures. But Hanuman moved carefully and cleverly through it all, following the faint trail of his friends, until at last he found Ahiravan's grand chamber — where Rama and Lakshman lay sleeping under a powerful spell, and Ahiravan himself stood ready to complete his magic at the stroke of midnight.
"You will not stop me," Ahiravan said with a sly smile, when he spotted Hanuman at the door. "My power is protected by five sacred lamps, burning in five different directions of this chamber. Only if all five are extinguished at the very same moment can my magic ever be broken — and no single creature has ever managed such a thing."
Hanuman looked around the vast chamber. The five lamps burned steadily in five far corners — north, south, east, west, and straight above — each one impossibly far from the others.
He thought quickly. One pair of hands would never be fast enough. One breath could never reach so far.
So Hanuman closed his eyes, gathered every blessing the gods had ever given him, and transformed — not into something larger, this time, but into something entirely new. Five faces bloomed from his own, each one looking a different way: his own familiar face, and beside it a mighty eagle, a fierce lion, a wise boar, and a swift horse — the Panchamukhi Hanuman, the Five-Faced Guardian.
With five faces looking in five directions at once, Hanuman took one single, enormous breath — and blew out all five lamps together, in the very same instant.
Instantly, Ahiravan's magic shattered like glass. His power gone, he could no longer hold Rama and Lakshman in his spell, and the two princes stirred, blinking awake, safe and unharmed.
Hanuman returned to his familiar single form, scooped his two dear friends gently onto his shoulders, and carried them swiftly back up through the tunnels, out of the underworld, and into the fresh morning light above.
The camp erupted in joyful cheers as Rama and Lakshman were welcomed home, safe and sound.
"Five lamps, five directions, and not one moment to spare," Rama said, shaking his head in wonder, "and yet you found a way."
Hanuman only smiled. "When one way isn't enough, sometimes you simply need to become five."
Fun Fact: To this day, temples across India honour Panchamukhi Hanuman — the five-faced form — as a powerful protector who can face danger from every direction at once.
When a problem seems too big to solve with just one idea, sometimes the answer is to look at it from every angle you can.
The End